


Darkest Dawn

by TheSigyn, zabjade



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 18:14:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 50
Words: 181,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7944379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/zabjade/pseuds/zabjade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Halloween night, Dawn Summers went missing. Two days later she turns up dead, and an already grieving Buffy has one less reason to try and claw her way back to life. But something already did come back – to demonic unlife, anyway. Now Spike has to rear an adolescent vampire, trying keep her from killing when she has no chip, no soul, and no real reason to be good, except for her respect for him. Season Six divergence, as Dawn is brought all the way in All The Way. Complete at 50 chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Missing Person

**Author's Note:**

> A joint project between Sigyn and zabjade! The intention here was to completely fail to remember who wrote what bits. You might be able to tell differences in style, but we both freely ran roughshod over each others scenes/chapters, so there’s some flavor of both of us all over the story. Rated AO for adult concepts more than adult content, but because we’re here already, some Spuffy smut might show up in later chapters. Beta work by the adorable/beloved ree and the superlative bewildered. Banner by nmcil.

 

   “Looking for a girl,” Spike said quietly.

    There was a scuffle of demonic legs and a low growl from the darkness of the lair he’d waltzed into. Without an invite, of course. Didn’t need an invite to enter another vampire’s digs.

    It was a crappy sort of place; no escape route, no link to the sewers, not even any electricity anymore. Filthy, ignorant little savage, this fledge, holing up in someone’s basement in a derelict house with a couple of middle-aged corpses stashed up in the attic. He could smell them rotting up there, giving the place that special kind of stench you usually only found with fledglings or those filth-loving cultists the great grandhag had been so bloody fond of.

    Since the Aurelians had been well and truly cleared out of Sunnydale, the house had probably been the vamp’s home when he’d been alive. Given the athletic trophies which had been scattered on the floor along with the family photos and enough refuse to fill three dumpsters, Spike figured the vamp in question had been in high school when he was turned. The corpses were probably his parents. Poor sods likely invited the bugger in.

    Spike didn’t bother vamping out. He knew he was the more powerful here. He lit a cigarette instead, to show his scorn. “Hey, there, mate,” Spike said. “Said I was looking for a girl. Wondered if–”

   The fledgling who seemed to think he was in charge roared through his fangs and went into a defensive stance. If not for the reason for this little visit, it would almost have been cute. Little puppy thought he could take on the big dog, did he?

   Spike raised his eyebrow. “You _really_ don’t know who I am?” he asked. “I thought all the vamps in this town knew old Spike.”

   “I know you, turncoat,” said the fledge. “And you’re not welcome here.”

   Spike smiled. A spot of violence then, was it? “I was hoping for that.”

   There were at least four vampires in the basement, and a corpse. Maybe two. Fresh. One smelled familiar, but wasn’t Dawn. He knew Dawn’s scent, and while she might have been there at one point, she wasn’t there now, neither alive nor dead. Still, the dumb fledges might have some idea where she’d got to... and hopefully she was still alive. She had to still be alive. He’d bloody well kill her if she wasn’t.

   Dawn had been missing for two days now.

   Technically, it had only been thirty-one hours, but thirty-one hours felt like two days, or two hundred days, when the not-so-little girl who you swore on your unlife to protect had been missing for all of them.

   The first hour, Spike and Buffy had been rolling their eyes. (Dawn’s off _again_.) The second hour, they had started to get a mite bit annoyed. (Isn’t this just like her? Chains. A ball and chain. They have their purpose.) By the third, they had started to bloody well worry about the chit. (Where is she? There are vampires out tonight, dammit! And not neutered ones like you, Spike.) (Watch it, slayer.)

   Then Spike lost the scent somewhere in the Happy Memories cemetery – the one where all the kids went to park and make out because it wasn’t very full, and had lovely vistas where the moon could wash majestically over the ground. He’d been tracking her pretty well, and then things went wonky, and everything blurred. Buffy had noticed something off too, and had said the world was wobbling, but Giles hadn’t seen anything different. It took Spike a good fifteen minutes for his nose to settle down again, and by the time it did, Dawn’s scent had disappeared in a set of tire tracks, which hit the highway, and he hadn’t been able to track her after that.

   They’d been back on a regular sweep from that point on, after calling in the reinforcements, such as they were. Xander and Anya had seemed more annoyed than eager to join in on the hunt. Apparently, the wanker had finally admitted to the engagement Anya had been dropping hints about since the night Buffy… since the night… Well, for months, anyway. Spike hadn’t even been invited to the impromptu engagement party. Of course he wasn’t. Wasn’t really part of the family anymore, now was he?

   It had been eating at him. All summer, he’d fought beside those damned Scoobies, lending his strength and his skill to their moronic quest to rid the world of his own kind. And okay, yeah, he liked a spot of violence, and yeah, he sometimes liked the birds, and Xander was fun to take the piss out of, and Giles was from ol’ Mother England and it was kinda fun to reminisce about the punk scene (never, ever in front of the “children” as Giles called them) and yeah, okay, Spike had never been all that fond of his own kind to start with.

   Still and all, it galled him that they’d included him when they needed him, and then dismissed him like some kind of minion when they were done. He’d thought he was one of them. Now he knew, he was just muscle. Buffy’s replacement muscle, and now they had her back, they not only didn’t need him; they didn’t _want_ him.

   Thinking like this always made him want to kill something. Fortunately, he had a ripe pack of candidates all ready for the staking. He’d keep one for a bit, for questioning, find out where the niblet had got to. And quick. She had to be running out of time. “Step up, mate. Ready for your thrashing?”

   “You’ll be ready,” said the pup before him. “For your death! Sheryl, now!”

   Sheryl turned out to be another vampire, of course – though Spike had once known a five-hundred-pound ooze demon named Sheryl. Made a surprisingly good cuppa, she had, once you got the slime off the fine china – and she would have been a quick stake if the kid in the letter jacket hadn’t jumped in at the same time. Spike used Sheryl as a club to knock Letter-Jacket into the wall, and then got blind-sided by Letter-Jacket’s buddy, Muscle-Shirt.

   Muscle-Shirt kicked Sheryl’s head into Spike’s face, which hurt his nose. (Why was it always the sodding nose?) He quickly staked Sheryl to get her out of the way, and spin kicked Muscle-Shirt to the ground, while Letter-Jacket decided he had recovered and leaped for him. Spike threw Letter-Jacket to the ceiling, where his head knocked against the beams of the floor above with an almost comical _tock!_

   As he bent to dust Muscle-Shirt, a Random-Squealing-Halter-Top tried to rush past him out into the daylight outside (daft of her, the dozy bint), so Spike grabbed her arm, and okay, now she was trying to rip it off. He threw her back into the nest to see if she’d try that again, and then dropped the stake into Letter-Jacket’s chest and stepped on it, which made things dusty for Letter-Jacket.

   Spike shook his head. So much for these pissant fledges and their stupid delusions of adequacy. Halter-Top and her final buddy were huddling behind a derelict couch in the back of the room, and as Spike approached they both bolted to a table and ducked under it.

   “Now, now, sweetbreads, there’s nowhere to go out there. Why don’t you just tell me what I need to know, and maybe one of you can get out of the day undusty, how’s that sound?” He spun his stake, and could hear them whispering, little vamp hisses. One of them muttered that she knew him, and that yeah, he would stake them.

   “My reputation has preceded me, I see,” Spike said. “I’m always up for a bit of flattery. So. Which one of you wants to get flat, and which one wants to tell me what I need to know? I tell you, I’m looking for a girl. Her scent’s fading, but she was here. If one of you–”

   He didn’t get the chance. Both the vamp girls darted, trying to make it past him, but they were just fledges and he was over a hundred, which technically qualified him as an elder. He was faster. He grabbed at them and they both screamed, high-pitched desperate squeals with a demonic growl under them. The blonde Halter-Top let her hair rip and darted outside where, predictably, she dusted, ‘cause she hadn’t grabbed a blanket or anything. Spike suspected she was just newborn, and hadn’t realized quite how quickly the sun would burn her skin. He was left with the brunette, his spoils, to torture Dawn’s location out of how he would.

   “No!” the vampire shrieked. “No, Spike, don’t!”

   Spike paused as the newborn before him shivered in his hands. Yellow eyes, sharp teeth, bumpy forehead, the works. She still reeked of death, she was so new to the change. “Please!” she said. “I’m sorry, please don’t stake me.”

   Spike’s face crumpled as he stared at the newborn. _No._  Spike felt like the stake in his hand had just been planted into his heart, and he kept waiting for the dust, but it wouldn’t come. It couldn’t be. This wasn’t right. He was working with the white hats these days, they always saved people, last minute rescue, they didn’t come too late! When things had gone all wonky at the cemetery, that had to be what was going on. Some bloody witch or somesuch had put a spell on him to make him see this, because this couldn’t be what had happened. It wasn’t bloody fair.

   The newborn vampire who cowered before him... she _was_ Dawn.

 


	2. Newborn

 

   “So, Justin said he really liked me, and he wanted to be with me, and I wasn’t sure, even though he said it was really sweet that I gave him my first kiss, and he said my first time would be even better, but I still wasn’t sure, so he kinda held me down, so I couldn’t really stop him…”

   Spike winced. The fledge didn’t notice, just kept nattering on in perky, disconnected tones, like she was telling the plot of some bloody show she’d seen on the telly.

   “…and finally I just decided to stop fighting him, ‘cause fighting him hurt and what he’d been doing before, that kinda didn’t, and bits of it had felt good even, so I figured I’d just let him get it over with, but by then it had stopped hurting, and I couldn’t really think or move, so I couldn’t just go home after, which I kinda wanted to…”

   The words flowed like holy water.  _ Drip, drip, drip _ as she rattled on, searing into him.   


   “…but I was really thirsty, so when he held his wrist to my mouth and it just trickled in there, that tasted really good, so I took more, and then… well, I think then I was dead, and when I woke up, I was here, and by then I was sure, so I fucked him, and then…”

   Oh god. He felt dizzy and sick, all from the godawful flow of words that just. Would. Not. Stop.

“…fucked his friend Zach ‘cause he said I owed it to him ‘cause this was his lair, not Justin’s, and well, okay, so I let him fuck me too, and so then we were talking about going and turning this kid Tony from school, ‘cause I’ve always liked his hair, and I was getting kinda hungry, so-”

   “Shut up,” Spike said dully.

   The newborn frowned at him. “I thought you said you wanted to know what happened?”

   “I did. I heard.”

   “But I wasn’t finished yet,” the newborn whined. “I was getting kinda hungry, but Zach said it was too late to go hunting tonight, and besides I hadn’t earned my keep yet, so he was gonna call his other friend the Caro demon, and then after  _ he _ fucked me maybe we could go hunting, you know, maybe head down to the Bronze or the burger joint, but I was seriously hungry, so he said Janice wasn’t completely drained yet, even though she had died just before I came back, which kinda sucked, ‘cause I would have preferred it if she was still alive and squealing –”

   Did she  _ really _ not hear herself? Didn’t she have any recollection of who she had been,  _ at all?  _ Where the fuck was Dawn?

   “I asked why he didn’t try to turn her, and he said she fought too hard, so that made sense – so I tried to take some of her blood even though it was cold and kinda dead, but they’d taken too much of her so alls I got was a bite of corpse, which wasn’t what I wanted, and... hey, could we go hunting?” She abandoned the lock of hair she’d been braiding while she spoke and looked up at him, for the first time sounding connected to what she was saying.

   Spike closed his eyes, but she kept on.

   “Oh, I mean, I know you can’t bite humans and all with that chip and stuff, but you’re sexy, and I know you’re good at that seduction technique. It’s not fair you can’t bite. Hey, what do you say you go bring a girl out to the alley with you to get it on, and I’ll bite her for you! All you’d have to do is hold her, that wouldn’t set off the chip, would it? Then after I kill her you can have some too, and... oh, god, I wanna go  _ right now _ ! Can we, Spike? Can we, can we?”

   “Stop it.”

   “Please? Please, please, _ please _ ? I’ll be your best friend, I’ll give you my extra cookies.” She chuckled. “God, I don’t even want the cookies. I just want to kill something, can you take me out to–”

   “Just stop it!” He couldn’t take it anymore. Something in Spike snapped, and he smacked her a good one across the face. “Shut it! Belt your bloody trap!”

   The newborn looked up at him, betrayed. “Hey! What was that?” she whimpered. “I thought you were my friend!”

   Spike growled, nearly shaking with a flurry of emotion. “ _ You _ are not my friend.  _ You _ are some pissant little fledge with nothing in you but death!”

   “Well... yeah!” the newborn said, looking up at him through her mystified yellow eyes. “Isn’t that kinda the point? Evil and stuff? I thought you got that!”

   “Shut! Up!” Spike roared. 

   He held his hands to his eyes and tried to think through his sudden, pounding headache. His first impulse was to stake the bloody thing. It was repulsive, he’d never seen anything so horrible in his unlife. This thing was Dawn, but it wasn’t Dawn. It was a vampire, and one of the most annoyingly stupid, personalityless vampires he’d seen in a long, long time.  _ Harmony _ had more personality than this thing! Lots more, actually.

   It made sense, of course. She had been turned by the worthless fledge in the letter-jacket, and even if he’d turned her as well as he could (which, given how quickly Dawn had risen, seemed likely), he just wouldn’t have had the strength to make anything more powerful than a fucking minion. From what the newborn had said, Letter-Jacket “Justin” had only been vamped for a couple months. God. It was the worst way to get turned. By some minion sired minion, on the basis of cute hair and the allure of Halloween.

   And how she’d described it... lured, raped, violated,  _ just stop fighting and let him get it over with. _ Not that Spike hadn’t done much the same in his day, but not to anyone important, not to  _ Dawn! _ Just some faceless bints who didn’t know what they were getting into. Plus, he hadn’t been lame enough to get caught out as a vamp unless he’d meant to. Justin had vamped out unknowingly in a make out session. Bloody hell, that was just  _ sloppy _ . Fledge slips. It sounded like a terrible way to die.

   The thought of it – die, a way to die, terrible way to _ die _ – stabbed at him over and over again. He had failed. He failed, he’d broken his promise again, and this time it had been Dawn who had paid ’cause he was so bloody worthless. She hadn’t just gotten hurt, she had  _ died _ , and all that was left was this brainless twit of a newborn with the bumpies...

   “Put your face down,” he commanded.

   “Huh?”

   “Smooth it out, take off the game face,” Spike snapped. “Let me see Dawn’s eyes.”

   The newborn looked confused. “Um... how?”

   How? Bloody fucking hell, _ how _ ? Spike’s voice came out in a furious growl. “Try to find whatever tiny spark of humanity is still inside you, and  _ quit stepping on it! _ ”

   “Oh. Um.” The newborn stared down at her hands and frowned. “Um. I can’t.”

   Spike lost his temper. “Do it!” he shouted. He smacked the newborn again, harder this time, knocking her to the ground. She screamed. “Do it! Do it! Do it, you pissant fledge, let her go!”

   “Stop! Spike!” There it was. His name had done it. She’d cared for him when she was still human, the betrayal of his blows had hurt more than the blows had. Dawn looked up at him, pale and tired, but those were her blue eyes. “What did I do wrong?”

   Dawn was whimpering. Dawn was weeping. Dawn was dead, and her eyes were weeping, and Spike wanted to cry himself. But you don’t cry in front of minions (was that what she was?) it’s a sign of weakness, and you don’t dare show weakness to other vampires. You keep your face hard and your voice ice and your fists clenched and you threaten them a lot.

   “I’m sorry,” Dawn whimpered. “Are you mad at me?”

   “Mad?” Spike glared. “Mad? Bloody hell, niblet, if you weren’t dead I’d kill you myself! Snap your head off and make a whip-cord out of your spine!”

   “Are you going to stake me?”

   Yes. No. Never. Should have done it already. “Fuck you, you dumb fledge,” was all he actually said. He sat back and tried to drive away the pounding in his skull, which just kept telling him,  _ this is wrong, this is broken, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be _ . He rubbed his face and sighed. “I don’t know yet.”

   “I can go,” Dawn said. Her voice sounded small and scared. He’d made her sound like that. “I’ll run away, I’ll leave Sunnydale, I’ll just go. You can tell Buffy I’m dead, you don’t have to worry about it anymore. I’ll kill a couple people on the way out for strength, and then I’ll just go. Down to L.A. maybe, I used to live there, I know it. There’s lots of places to hunt there, and... damn. I forgot about Angel. He’d stake me, wouldn’t he. Well... well... maybe... maybe I can um... I could go north. Um. To Canada. And–” her face fell back to the bumpies, and she didn’t even seem to notice. “It should be easy to kill in Canada. I mean, who locks their doors in Canada? I could find a high-school there, turn a couple more kids, get a gang together. It should be easy. Hunt the playgrounds, find kids who are late getting home. And I could–”

   “Shut it,” Spike said.

   She’d learned. She shut it.

   Damn. Following minion instinct. She’d obey anyone even slightly stronger right now, until she decided to betray them, or found someone stronger than them. It wasn’t a bond of affection or anything. Just a lack of any real will beyond fight-bite-kill-feed. Beyond those instincts the first impulse was to  _ follow _ . There wasn’t any thought in her head at this point. And wouldn’t be, not for decades, not with the way that fledge had turned her. By then she’d be just pure evil, too.

   It seemed a shame. Evil was brilliant, but there was so much more to the world than that. Manchester United. Spicy buffalo wings. Grunion runs. Music and beauty and love and a good shag, and she wasn’t gonna have any interest in  _ any _ of that at the rate she was turning. 

   Spike sighed tiredly and looked up at the ceiling. “Can’t do aught now, anyroad,” he said. “Sun’s up, and you’re too fragile to duck it. Get some sleep.”

   The newborn swallowed and stood up, nervous. “Um. Um, I’m. I’m still hungry.”

   “Good!” Spike snapped. The idea of what Buffy would say if Dawn ended up killing anyone... Spike turned his head from the thought. The idea of what Buffy would say or do or feel was something he’d been trying not to think about since daybreak yesterday, when he’d had to leave off looking for Dawn, letting the daywalkers have their turn. He’d followed up rumors in the tunnels, but it had still taken him until now to find her. Too late. Far, far too late.

   “Okay,” the newborn said quietly. “Am... am I gonna starve to death?”

   Spike was about to get mad, when he realized she really didn’t know. It did  _ feel _ like you were starving to death when you first got turned. You were always hungry. Death came quickly for anyone around you. “No,” he told her. “You can’t. You just feel desperate to feed, is all. You can be locked in box for a hundred years and not die of starvation. You just shrink to a bone-sack is all.”

   “Oh.” She swallowed. “So... I should sleep?”

   “Already said that, din’t I?” Spike roared.

   The newborn retreated across the lair and lay meekly down on the couch. Spike leaned his head back in his chair and rubbed at his temples. Bloody hell. What the hell was he gonna do?    


 

 


	3. Lost

    “So. Now what do we do?” Buffy demanded. Empty faces stared back at her. A sea of them. There were too many people in Buffy’s house. So how come it still felt empty? How could it be empty with Giles, and Xander and Anya, and Willow and Tara? Each one felt like at least three or four people, taking up the space and using up all the air. Panic clutched at Buffy’s chest, the kind of panic she’d been keeping on lockdown. It was escaping. God, there was no air. No Dawn and no air. Where was all the air?

   Stupid Dawn. Running off and taking all the air with her. She was  _ so _ grounded when she… when she came back. Buffy swallowed down nausea as she paced the living room, somehow avoiding running into the fifty or so people her friends had turned into.

   “Come on!” she ran her fingers through her hair, resisting the urge to pull it out. “Come on! We need to keep looking.”   


   “We’ve  _ been _ looking,” Xander said pointedly. He was rubbing his feet, where he had loudly complained he was developing a corn. 

   “Yeah, we have, but it’s not enough.”

   “Buffy.” Giles gently put his hand on her shoulder. “I know this is hard on you, but you need to rest. We all do.”

   “No!” Buffy jerked away from him, her voice cracking on the word from exhaustion and barely repressed panic. “No rest until we find Dawn! We have to stay on our feet and just keep looking!” She stared wildly at her friends, but none of them would meet her eyes. “Why won’t any of you help me? Come on, people. Dawn is missing, Janice is missing, and no one has seen them since yesterday night. Hospital is clear, there’s been no demony ransom calling me out. So, now what? Where haven’t we looked?”

   There was dead silence. 

   “For god’s sake, you guys looked after her all summer! Where the hell does Dawn go when she wants to run off and be bad?”

   “To Spike, usually,” Tara said. “We… kinda turned a blind eye. Spike said we had to let her be bad sometimes, or she’d do it anyway in secret. She was safer with him than she was running off on her own.”

   “Well, she’s not with Spike, or he’d have brought her back here. Next.” 

   Anya lifted her head. “Do we know that?  I mean, has anyone checked Spike’s crypt? He’s been gone since like… yesterday morning.”

   “Yeah, he’s not one for the fiery immolation, really,” Buffy said sarcastically. “Not even in a good cause.”  

   “Yeah, but… you’d think he’d have rejoined the search, or come to check, right, once the sun went down? I mean, he may be nice for a people-eating demon, but he  _ is _ , you know, a people-eating demon.” She paused for a moment, thinking about that. “Even if he can’t actually do the people-eating anymore.”

   “She’s not there. Spike doesn’t have her.” Buffy knew she wasn’t there. She hadn’t been certain of a lot of things since being torn away from heaven and brought back to this horrible place, but she knew Spike wouldn’t hurt her. Not like this, anyway. 

   “Perhaps we should check, Buffy,” Giles said. “It is strange that he hasn’t returned, and--”

   “If you think we have time to waste checking an empty crypt, go ahead!” Buffy snapped. “She won’t be there, he won’t be there. If he had her, he’d be bringing her here. He’s either out searching for her, got held up looking for her, or worst case scenario, getting blind drunk at Willy’s cause he gave up looking for her, okay? Next option.”  

   No one else seemed to have any ideas, and the walls were starting to close in on her, stealing what little air she’d managed to find. She needed to get out. She needed to be out there, looking for Dawn and breathing. The silence of no-next-option hurt her ears.

   “I… I can’t stay here,” she said, her voice shaking as she broke from her circular pacing to head for the door. “I need to be out there.”

   “It, it might be time t-to call the police.” Tara’s quiet voice stopped Buffy in her tracks. “Dawnie… Dawnie’s been gone for over twenty-four hours. Sh-she’s a missing person.”

   “We can’t call the police, all that does is get them killed!” 

   “We don’t know that this was demonic in origin, Buffy,” Giles said. “She might just be lost, or it might be some purely human abduction.”

   “No.” Willow sounded annoyed. “The police already have an APB out for them, Janice’s mom called them. We can do this on our own. We have magic.” 

   Buffy glanced back in time to see Willow raise her hand. Weird, nausea-inducing tingles ran over Buffy’s scalp as her hair suddenly rose in response, and she let out a reflexive “ouch” as a single hair yanked itself out of her head and floated towards Willow.

 

** … **

 

   Tara couldn’t help flinching away from Willow as one of Buffy’s hairs gently floated towards where they were sitting on the couch. “There,” Willow said gleefully. “That’ll track her.”

   Tara  felt sick, like a greasy eel had squirmed its way into her stomach and was writhing around. She looked at the woman beside her, and for a moment, she saw a complete stranger. What had happened to her sweet, sometimes childlike Willow?

   This Willow was more child _ ish _ than childlike, flinging magic around like it was a toy instead of a powerful force that deserved respect. The engagement party and this thing with the hair, both were a worrying pattern but  _ nothing _ in comparison to the spells she’d done at the Bronze. They still didn’t know what the consequences of that had been. It didn’t matter if it had only been a few seconds, shunting people back and forth through dimensions was  _ dangerous _ . The fact that Willow – who didn’t seem to understand the ethics of magic – hadn’t even broken a sweat was downright terrifying.

   “We’ll just do a teensy-weensy spell, and everything will be all better,” Willow said with a smile as the hair came to a rest on the palm of her hand.

   “Is that how you plan to solve everything now, with magic?” The words poured out of her, pushed out by anger and fear. Fear for Dawn and fear of what Willow was becoming. It had been building ever since the argument at the Bronze that had ended with her girlfriend just casually casting a dimensional shift. She’d been worried for a while now, but that fight at the Bronze….  _ What do you want me to do, just, just sit back and keep my mouth shut? That would be a good start. _ And then she’d cast that spell. “My god, Willow, couldn’t you have just  _ asked _ for a strand of hair?”

   “Hey, what’s the big deal?” Xander asked, sounding defensive. “It’s just a little bit of magic. That’s your guys’… thing, isn’t it? You and Will do magic. Before you guys called last night I was about to do some myself with this penda–”

   “She’s been using it t-too much,” Tara interrupted, anger making her stutter worse as the words tumbled out. “Magic isn’t, isn’t a  _ game _ . It’s n-not a party trick or a way to make everything easier.”

   Xander quietly went white and returned his attention to his feet.

   “I haven’t been doing anything wrong!” Willow huffed out, giving Tara a hurt puppy dog look that was like a stab to the heart. “Why can’t you just drop it?”

    “Be-because I love you! And I’m worried about you. Y-you shifted people back and forth out of reality l-like it was  _ nothing _ !” 

    “She did  _ what _ ?” Giles’s voice was quiet, but that was somehow scarier than if he’d shouted. The gaze he turned on Willow was icy. “Have you learnt nothing at all, you foolish girl? First your resurrection spell, and now this?”

    “I’m not going to sit here and be lectured by a jealous old man,” Willow snapped, surging to her feet. “Just because you two can’t do it, doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t.” 

    “Tara, drop it,” Buffy snapped, and Tara went almost dead. Buffy was never this cruel. “And Giles, just stop. Now is not the time for a Dangers of the Dark Force lecture. Dawn is _ missing! _ Willow, if you could do this spell all along, why didn’t you do it before?”

    Willow shrugged. “It didn’t occur to me.”

    “Which sounds indeed like you’re thinking eminently clearly,” Giles said with scorn. 

    “Stop it,” Buffy said again. “Willow, do your spell. And next time, don’t sit on your hands when there’s something that you think can help!”

    Tara just sat there for a moment while Willow headed for the stairs, feeling numb and tired. She knew she was right. Willow’s magic use was spiraling out of control. They needed to stop it, and soon. But…  Dawn _ was _ missing. 

_ Dawnie _ .... Tears prickled at the back of her eyes. Something bad had to have happened. Pretending to be at a friend’s house while secretly sneaking out on Halloween night – the one night that was supposed to be safe from the monsters – was one thing, but staying away this long? Dawn wouldn’t do that to them. She was out there somewhere, probably scared if she wasn’t… wasn’t….

    Tara swallowed back the tears and followed after Willow. Right now, she didn’t even trust the other witch with something as simple as a locator spell. She froze at the top of the stairs. Why  _ hadn’t _ they ever thought of using one before now?  Dawn had run away or been kidnapped over and over again, and she and Willow  _ both _ knew locator spells. Hell, even Giles knew a primitive one, and he was no great sorcerer. If you had some connection to the person or something that belonged to them,  the spell was easy. But, for some reason, they’d never even thought of using one to find Dawn. Even when they knew Glory had her, they’d just followed Tara in her madness to find her. That didn’t make sense. 

_ No _ . Everything always makes sense, somehow. What had her mother taught her? Magic is magic, but there’s logic behind everything. She tried to logic it out. Why wouldn’t it ever occur to anyone to use a spell to locate Dawn?

    The monks had made Dawn in order to keep her hidden from Glory. They’d altered reality to fit her in like a cuckoo. Tara didn’t think it would have been that hard to include some kind of aversion to even thinking about using something like a locator spell to find the girl. Except… except now Willow  _ had _ thought of it and was getting ready to do one.

    Icy dread shivered through her. No. No, it couldn’t be. Dawn couldn’t be.... Tara raced the rest of the way to the room she shared with Willow, ignoring the protest of muscles still stiff and sore from the long search. “Willow?” she called. Willow didn’t answer, but Tara heard chanting. She burst through the door and saw  Willow bending over a map of Sunnydale. If the spell worked, Dawn should show up as a little red dot. If she wasn’t in Sunnydale, the red dot would stop at the edge of the page and hover there pointing the direction she was in. Tara paused, waiting to see the red dot. It blossomed over the map, hovered, and then…  fizzled out. 

    She and Willow stared at each other. “Uh-oh,” said Willow. 

    Both of them knew exactly what that meant.

    “Oh god,” Tara whispered, stumbling further into the room to sit down on the bed before her knees gave out. “How, how are we going to tell Buffy?”

    It was the worst way to hear it. No news, no explanation, just a solid certainty that Dawn had to be... 

    “That can’t be right,” Willow said. “No, it can’t be.”

    “Maybe… maybe because Dawn was the key it’s not… w-working?” Tara asked. It was a long shot. She’d felt the spell taking, and she hadn’t even been the one casting it.

    “Maybe,” Willow said. They both knew they were grasping at straws. “Hang on a second. Maybe I can find Janice.” She closed her eyes and muttered something. A minute later, a jacket that had been hung up in the kitchen sailed up the stairs, through the door, and put itself into Willow’s hand.

    Tara knew she should protest the levitation, but she didn’t have the energy. 

    “This was Janice's. She left it here last week. If I just plug this in-- ”

    Tara didn’t protest the on-the-fly alteration to the spell, either, which was also reckless. She just let Willow get on with it. The spell charged, flared, and then… fizzled again.  No marks on the map. “Janice, too,” Tara whispered. “That means… it means that Dawn….”

    “No! It doesn’t!”

    “Yes, it does!” Tara said. “We have to tell Buffy.”

    “We don’t have to,” Willow said, sounding more excited than horrified. “We’ll just tell her that it didn’t work. I’ll pretend to keep working on finding her while getting things together for another –”

    “No!” How could she even be thinking of such a thing? “Now you’re thinking of not even telling _Buffy_? What is _wrong_ with you!”

    “What do you mean?” 

    “I mean we both know what that spell said! Dawn’s spirit isn’t here, isn’t  _ anywhere _ on this plane! That means she’s either been kidnapped across dimensions, or she’s--”

    “I know that,” Willow said. “But I did it once, I can do it again. I think I found out a way of doing it even without an urn of Osiris. I didn’t have the access to the power before, but now--”

    “You can’t do that!” Tara had ignored her own misgivings about bringing back Buffy because of the special circumstances of the slayer’s death, but this was different. 

    “Why not?” Willow demanded, seeming genuinely confused. “I can do it. I  _ know _ I can do it.”

    “That’s not the  _ point _ . You can’t just go playing around with forces like that, Willow! Once was bad enough. Look what it’s done to Buffy, let alone  _ you! _ You think this is some kind of computer game, where you can bring characters back from the last save point? This isn’t a joke! Dawn is  _ dead! _ ” 

    She was cut off by something that sounded like a cross between a gasp of surprise and a moan of pain. Tara looked towards the doorway. Buffy stood there, eyes wide and a look of horror on her face. Behind her stood Giles and Xander and Anya, all drawn by the shouting. 

    This wasn’t how Tara would have wanted to break the news, but the cat was out of the bag now, and everyone knew it. 

    Dawn was dead. 

 

 


	4. Sire

Dawn was dead.

Spike had already known that, technically, but this was different. The newborn looked very, very dead, asleep. Drusilla had breathed in her sleep, taking in the air, reading the world around her, even in her dreams. Angelus, he breathed in his sleep, too. Darla hadn’t, always, but she’d been trained not to by her Master, and could fake dead for weeks, just like that old Aurelian could. Spike knew he himself breathed in his sleep, too.

The newborn didn’t. There was no reason for it to, because there wasn’t enough will inside it to need to. The demon didn’t care what scents or sounds or life happened while it was asleep, because it was very, very dead, and it saw nothing in life except how to kill it.

Spike had a stake in his hand, and he stared at the dead thing on the couch. She looked no more alive than her little friend Janice, who had been sprawled on the floor, tied with a telephone cord in the corner by the water heater. Her eyes were cold and staring and she was covered in bites. Spike remembered the chit laughing with Dawn as he’d dropped her off to spend the night at her friend’s house. He’d never really known Janice as more than a face and a name, but she had been Dawn’s best friend. And the newborn over there had thought no more about her than as something to snack on, that would have been better squealing.

Spike had shoved Janice’s corpse deeper into the shadow and covered it with a piece of cardboard after he was sure it wasn’t about to rise like Dawn had. Then he’d sat down to rest again, but really he was staring at what was left of his niblet, still and silent all, dead as stone on the wasted ruin of a couch.

It wasn’t fair. If she was gonna be a vampire, she deserved more than this.

Spike sank back into the chair he’d claimed as his and started cleaning under his fingernails with the stake, deceptively calm. There was a part of him inside that was screaming and ranting and beating at the heavens, but he wasn’t going to let that part out just now. He needed to think. Thinking wasn’t his strong suit – or at least he’d never believed it was – but he wasn’t an idiot.

Well, whatever happened, he couldn’t leave things as they were. Dawn the empty-headed killing machine was not going to fly; not with Buffy, not with the Scoobies, and not with him. Which left staking the bit, or coming up with something else.

“I think you don’t understand, young Willy,” Angelus’s voice purred in his memory. “There’s an order to things. Drusilla here is my wicked daughter. My masterpiece. Look at her, Willy. You don’t really think I could leave her to the likes of one who isn’t one of mine? How can I be sure you’ll support her in the manner to which I’m sure she should become accustomed?”

Spike tried to shake it off, but Angelus was persistent in his mind, like he always was. No, he told himself. There’s gotta be some other way.

What Angelus had done, holding him down like that, tearing him open, sinking his fangs in, oh god. His screams as Dru had just watched... just sat and watched. He’d called out to her, begging her to help him. And she’d just sat and watched.

Which... okay. If Dru had been doing that to someone, he’d have just sat and watched, too. Dru had been Spike’s sire. Angelus was hers. That was the thing about sires. You let them do what they wanted. They were both mentor and creator, and maybe there was more to it, a stronger minion instinct toward your sire than there was toward any random stronger creature. That was why, Spike figured, Angelus had done it. Resired him, claimed him, filled him up with his own blood as well as Drusilla’s, and yeah… it had made Spike obey him better. Hate him more. But love him more, too.

Minion instinct, follower instinct, stronger with a sire than with anyone else. That had seemed to be the case with all the minions he’d made over the years; dumb-ass, weak-willed creatures he’d only given a drop to rise on, who followed and said their “Yes, boss” and who Spike almost invariably staked as soon as they seemed to be developing any will of their own. They followed him easier than they’d follow any other.

“You know I gave her permission to make you, don’t you Willy?” Angelus whispered in his mind. “She was lonely. I told her to make herself a pet. You wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for me. You know she’s mine. She’s completely mine. You’re only an extension of me. William. Wonderful name. You know she only chose you for the name, don’t you? Sweet William. I was Liam. You’re just a wee English version of me for her to play with. I like that about you.”

He’d had only a few blessed days with Drusilla before she’d taken him to Angelus, and at first he had worshiped the bloke. Followed him, listened to him, learned how to kill. And then Angelus had claimed Dru’s bed just to spite him, and Spike had lost the fight after – inevitable – and then the way Angelus had claimed him... no!

Doesn’t have to go quite like that though, does it? he told himself. You wouldn’t have to hurt her. Just one bite, and none of the mind games and the torture. And you sure as hell wouldn’t have to leave her drained for... however long that interminable time was. A day? A week? Wouldn’t have to do that. Quick, clean. Make it clinical. That could work.

It would have to be clinical. Yeah. If he was gonna do it at all, which he hadn’t decided on, yet. He looked over at the still corpse. Bugger, he should just stake her. Buffy would want it that way, she wouldn’t want her sister... Dawn. She wouldn’t want Dawn... bloody hell!

Spike’s head bowed and the tears he’d been fighting slipped out, and bugger! Bloody buggering fuck, this wasn’t right! He’d lost Buffy, and now he’d lost Dawn, and he knew, he knew he was gonna lose Buffy again if he didn’t make the right decision now, but he didn’t know what the right decision was!

And another voice entered his head. Xander’s. “Don't tell me you're not happy. Look me in the eyes, and tell me when you saw Buffy alive, that wasn't the happiest moment of your entire existence.”

Spike wasn’t happy. Dawn wasn’t alive. But this was a part of her, some little part of her, and yeah, her soul must have winged its way off to the Elysian Fields, but some part of her, any part of her that was Dawn. It wasn’t right to just get rid of that. It wasn’t that he hadn’t played blood games like this with Drusilla, and they weren’t torture then. It was just the way Angelus had done it, that’s all. That’s the way Angelus did everything. Spike wasn’t Angelus, he didn’t have to be Angelus, just because he did something similar, that didn’t make it the same thing.

Dawn’s corpse was still warm inside. He could smell it, a few tiny cells that hadn’t stopped dividing yet, unaware that the heartbeat had stopped to be replaced by the constant pulseless rush of demonic energies, unaware that her brain and her nervous system and all the other trappings that made a being its own creature had been abandoned by the soul and replaced by a demon. Some of those tiny little cells inside Dawn were still alive, and would be for, oh, another good three hours or more. She was still turning into a vampire. And it wasn’t like it was his fault (though it was his fault, he’d gotten here too late) but it wasn’t as if he’d turned her himself, he was just fixing up a shoddy job done by an ass who deserved dust, and...

Spike realized he was rationalizing, and that in itself meant he’d already decided what to do. Not without letting her know what she was in for, though. Not that she was capable of saying yes or no or consenting to jack right now, what with her minion head the way it was. Still. It was a chance... just a chance... just the tiniest chance of her escaping the fate of Sheryl and Justin and that Zach character, a short life of death and powerless idiocy, playing deadly pranks on innocents and then getting dusted by the next strong-arm that came by and wanted their playground.

That was no life for what was left of his niblet.

He sat down beside the newborn and gently woke her. Or reanimated her, since she’d looked dead before he put his hand on her. He set the stake carefully, but noticeably, on the side table and took hold of the newborn’s hand. Her yellow eyes stared in fear, and she swallowed. “You gonna stake me?”

“Is that what you want?”

“No!” she said, trembling. She sat up a little and looked at him. “That’s what Buffy’s gonna do, isn’t it. She’s gonna stake me. It’s her job.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is, niblet. I’m sorry.”

A tiny spark of something flashed in the newborn’s eye when he called her niblet. Then... no. Gone again. But it was a sign that he wasn’t too late yet.

“I... I could run?” she offered again.

“Someone else would kill you,” Spike said. “Some other demon, some other vampire. Or the daylight, or the cops, or some exorcist with a vial of holy water. You’re not strong enough to survive on your own, not unless you were very, very lucky.”

She trembled a little. “Could you teach me?”

Spike smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, actually I could.” He swallowed. “I’m gonna do something to you, all right, niblet? I’m gonna take away all that blood that Justin gave you. It’s crap blood, you don’t need it.”

“But... but I do need it. Blood is everything. God, Spike, don’t take my blood! Please?” The fear and panic in her voice were heartrending, but he couldn’t leave her like this.

“It’s all right, little bit, I’m gonna give you mine. It’s better for you. You gonna be okay with that?”

She wasn’t together enough to even understand. “I guess. Is that what you want me to do?”

“Yes,” Spike said. “It is. But the first part is gonna seem a little scary, and I want you to just relax, okay? And the second part... is gonna be a bit weird.”

“Oh, I’m okay with weird. I let Zach fuck me, and let me tell you, he was weird. He wanted to put it–”

“Stop!” Spike snarled. He did not want to hear this. “It’s not like that, you hear me? It’s not like that at all. This is just giving you what you need, you get that?”

She swallowed, and went serious again. “Okay.”

“I’m not gonna hurt you much,” Spike said. “But you’re really not gonna like this. But you can trust me, okay?” He stared into her yellow eyes, using all the power of his voice and his gaze and his strength, and he’d never decided if it was anything magical or demonic, something akin to Drusilla’s thrall-gift, or if it was just a strong personality controlling a weak one, but it had worked on his minions before. Though... he’d never been this gentle with any of them. “Tell me you trust me.”

“I trust you, Spike.”

“Good girl.” He took hold of her wrist. “You lie still. Try not to move, not even if you get scared, okay?”

“What if I can’t?”

“Then I’m gonna hold you down. I’m not gonna hurt you, but I am gonna hold you, okay?”

Dawn nodded. “Okay.”

Spike took a deep breath and slid into his game face. A knife would probably work better, but this was more visceral, more instinctive, and the demon she was right now would understand it better. He sank his fangs to her wrist and slashed, up, down, back and forth, avoiding the tendons but slicing deep until he got both the radial and the ulnar arteries, and demonic blood spurted sour in his mouth.

Vampire blood could taste wonderful, but hers didn’t. It was weak, almost putrid, and he didn’t want it. He spat out what taste he’d gotten and then held Dawn’s arm over the side of the couch. Damn. He should have gotten a bowl, it was getting all over the floor... Without letting go of her wrist he scrabbled for an empty soda box, and held it under the flowing stream of blood, and Dawn’s other hand grabbed for his shoulder. “Spike, I don’t like this.”

“I know, platelet. It’s scary.”

“But that’s mine!”

“I know. Just hold on.”

“Why aren’t you drinking it?”

“It’s shit,” Spike said. He looked into her eyes. “Trust me. This is shit. We gotta get it out of you, as much as we can.”

Dawn was already visibly shaking. “Okay.”

Spike took her other hand in his and held it strong, letting her feel his strength, because the vampire she was, it would respect that. She stared into his eyes and held his hand, but her trembling increased, getting stronger and stronger until she was almost convulsing. Spike knew she was trying to hold it back, because she kept looking into his eyes, but the demon screamed at the loss of its blood, its power, and it tore at her.

“It’s gonna be all right niblet, just hang on.”

“Spike... Spike... I... I... ahh!” She did scream then, and he dropped her hand and held her, because he knew what that part felt like, the terror of it.

He murmured to her, endearments, apologies, he actually wasn’t sure, and at one point she struggled against him, trying to fight him, but her strength was already past, and it didn’t last long. Finally she sank and faded under him, and the blood slowed, and he lay her back on the couch and kept kneeling by her side until the blood stopped flowing from the slash on her wrist. Then, and only then, did he take his mouth to the cut and suck, drawing out as much of that crap as he could, spitting it out sometimes, swallowing it when he had to, just getting that shit out of her.

Angelus hadn’t been this thorough. He hadn’t been trying to rid Spike of all of Drusilla’s blood, and in fact had swallowed it like it was some erotic game. Spike wasn’t even sure if this was going to do what he wanted it to, but he’d heard rumors about this kind of thing, and really... sometimes demonic instinct knew what it was doing, yeah? This seemed right to him. The poetry of it. It made sense.

Finally she not only looked dead, she looked slightly desiccated. He was pulling like hell to get anything out, and his mouth was sore with it. He’d had to get another soda box. A human, someone Dawn’s size, would hold about four or five liters of blood. He’d gotten out about three and a half. He wasn’t going to get any more. He gently shoved the oozing soda boxes aside, sliding them into another box, and then shunted the whole thing out the outer door. The demonic blood fizzed and burst into flame in the sunlight, finally burning up. That took care of what was left of Justin.

Spike turned back to Dawn and gently folded her hands over her chest. Angelus had left him like this when he had resired him, immobile and terrified and in pain, covered with bites without the blood to heal them. He’d also broken bones and done other still more unspeakable things with Spike’s immobile body before he’d finally, finally, bitten his wrist and let Spike have a taste of his blood, slowly bringing him back to himself, then taking it away again, over and over... dammit. Don’t think about that, Spike milad, it sucked. And not in the good way. Just... take care of the niblet.

Spike slashed at his own wrist, and held the slow stream over Dawn’s dead, gaping, fanged mouth. At first it simply pooled in there, and Spike rubbed her throat gently with his other hand. “Come on, little bit. Come on, take it in.”

The slightest movement of her throat. She hadn’t swallowed yet, but she’d moved her tongue out of the way... “That’s it. That’s it, take it in. It’ll make you strong.”

A trickle of blood leaked out the side of her mouth. As if realizing she was going to lose it if she didn’t do something, she finally swallowed, her throat opening to pull the blood inside. “That’s it, bit!” Spike said, feeling unexpectedly triumphant. This... wasn’t like how he’d made minions. That was all rough and forced against their warm and half-dead mouths, usually as they fought the strangeness. He’d never felt this kind of satisfaction as he realized they were finally taking the blood in. Only a sense of, There, that’s done. Nothing like this sweet... bloody hell, joy. That was joy.

And that was wrong. Because there was no joy in this. Or there shouldn’t have been anyway, Dawn was dead, and he was just killing her more. Except... maybe not.

Maybe the poetry had told him true for once.

“Come on, niblet, take some more.” Spike held his wrist closer, and for a long time all she could do was just let the blood pool, and then swallow, pool, and swallow, over and over again. But then her yellow eyes blinked, and she licked her lips, and her mouth opened wider to catch the blood, and then he let his hand fall and she locked her fangs in and sucked and sucked and sucked, a true newborn, drawing in life.

She started to breathe. Spike didn’t know why he wanted to laugh as he realized she was drawing in deep breaths through her nose, trying to smell the blood as well as swallow it, and then her hands were moving, and she’d taken hold of his wrist and gripped it, so strong suddenly, hungry for the blood. Spike had broken out into an involuntary smile as her strength returned, and it was so damn good to see her suckling. And yeah, okay, her fangs hurt, but that was okay. Birth was supposed to hurt.

She began to make little humming sounds as she swallowed, and she sat up and held the wrist closer against her mouth, her tongue running over his wrist, lapping up the blood, and then she toppled, falling off the couch and into his lap, and yeah, yeah, that was right, his little niblet there, in his lap, as he fed her proper. He cradled her back with his other hand, gently rubbing her shoulder, murmuring more about being a good girl, take it in, that’s right, niblet, and it hurt. It was starting to really hurt, he was starting to feel scared himself. He’d lost too much blood, and just like hers his body didn’t like that, and it protested by making him feel fear.

Fear was good. Spike liked fear. He shifted and leaned against the couch and let himself be scared as Dawn sat cradled in his lap and took more and more and more of his blood, enough that her stomach was distended with it, and fine, good girl, take more. He trembled under her weight and just let her feed. She needed it. Dammit, the bit deserved it. If she was going to be a bloody vampire, for god’s sake, he was gonna do everything in his power to see to it that she was a god damn good one!

 

***

 

He didn’t know if he’d passed out. He had gone woozy and tired and still, until he realized the suckling had stopped, and she had let his wrist go. He lay quiet for a while after that, propped up against the couch, just letting the fear slowly fade away.

He finally opened his eyes feeling ravenous, hungry enough that even that spent and way-too-aged corpse across the way almost smelled appetizing. Dawn sat in his lap still, kind of curled into his arm, staring at her fingernails. They were chipped, and had dirt caked under them likely from scrabbling to fight Justin off before she’d decided to just let him get it over with. Spike shifted his head and looked down at her.

Dawn’s blue eyes gazed up at him, and she looked a little nervous. “Your blood tastes weird,” she said. She looked back down at her fingers. “I need to touch up my nail polish. Do you think I should switch to red, or should I go back to blue? Red’s more vampire, but blue’s more fun.”

Spike reached up and touched her face. Dawn’s face, not the bumpy resting face of a dumb minion, but a properly fed vampire child, ready to learn the ways of the night. “Yeah, niblet,” he said, gazing into her eyes. “Blue’s loads more fun.”


	5. Fledge

 

 

   “Did the moon always have so many craters?”

   Spike looked over at Dawn, who was standing on the second rung up on the highway barrier, staring up at the sky.

   “Yeah,” he said. “You just couldn’t see ‘em as clear.”

   “That is totally awesome! And there’s more stars, did you know that?”

   “No,” he told her. “The stars have been falling steadily from the sky ever since that sod Edison polluted it with his bloody bottled lightning.”

   Dawn grinned at him. “I always loved how you talked. You should write poetry and shit.”

   Spike laughed, but it was without much humor. He felt a little woozy, still. The terror he’d felt when his blood got low hadn’t entirely abated, even after he’d started to adapt a bit. “I’ll think on it.”

   Dawn jumped down from the fence and did a few cartwheels, her brown hair picking up the few autumn leaves that fell in California. “This is  _ awesome _ ! I feel  _ so _ strong.”

   “I know, bit.”

   “No, really. Just so totally strong! I could do, like... anything!”

   “I know.”

   “No, anything! I could... I could jump off a tower and be just fine!”

   “I shattered almost every damn bone when I did it,” Spike pointed out ,  trying his best not to think too much about it. Or about Buffy having to follow him down because he had bloody well failed to keep his promise. Same as now….

   “Oh. Well. I could... I could wrestle a lion!”

   “The mountain lions ‘round here are smart enough not to get into wrestling matches.”

   “I could punch through a wall!”

   “You could cut your wrist again.”

   “Well, I... I could hit the coast and swim all the way to L.A.”

   “The tides still grab you even when you don’t drown,” Spike said. “And you can still pass out.”

   “Why? Since we don’t need to breathe?”

   “I don’t bloody know, do I. I just know I’ve been choked out, and I’ve passed out in water. What do you want from me?”

   While patience had never exactly been his strong suit, he  _ did _ have it when it came to the women he loved. Otherwise, he’d never have stayed with Dru for as long as he did, and it wouldn’t have been her dumping him. That said, Dawn was trying his, her constant barrage scraping at his temper and leaving him frustrated and out of sorts. Also, he wasn’t sure he even liked this Dawn very much yet. He didn’t know her very well. 

   She came up and slid her arm into his, just like she used to do when she was still human and sweet and good, and now she was vampiric and dangerous and evil, and she was still skipping along with that grin on her face. “What’s the matter, Spike? Aren’t you happy?”

   He only sighed.

   “I know what’ll cheer you up,” Dawn said. “We could go kill someone.”

   “Bit!”

   “Hear me out!” Dawn said. “Look, I know, my plan before was really lame. I hadn’t thought it out much, but I’m serious. I could seriously help you hunt. Look, you have the skills, and I don’t have a chip. You work ‘em, I bite ‘em, and you can even get live blood that way. Once they’re already bleeding, I mean...” She looked up at him. “Why  _ didn’t _ you ever get anyone to work with you?” she suddenly asked. “I mean... that doesn’t even make sense. The chip doesn’t inhibit you  _ that _ much.”

   “Took you two years and an infusion of demon blood to finally suss that out?” Spike asked. “We’re not gonna go kill anyone for two reasons. Three reasons,” he amended. “One, we’re in Sunnydale.”

   “What’s that supposed to mean?”

   “It means the hellmouth draws demons like a buglight, the place is over hunted, and the prey is savvy. People don’t wander alone at night unless you’re damned lucky, and hunting in public isn’t a skill you’ll have picked up yet, pet, even in human camo. Reason number two, you’re already high as a kite, the last thing you need is human blood in you.”

   “So human blood really is like a drug?”

   “Kind of,” Spike said.

   “Is that why we want it so much? A built in addiction?”

   “Kind of!” Exasperated, Spike turned to her. “Look, I look back on my life and the dumbest decisions I ever made were all made hot with human blood. Let’s start a row in Prague! Just took a victim. Let’s go forge a truce with a slayer! First time I’d killed my own victim in months. Let’s go hunt down the slayer in broad daylight and brag about the pretty magic gem I got! I sucked down a coed the second I got into the sunlight, bit, and jumped your sis too fast to think straight. Trust me, you wanna screw up fast, get yourself hot with blood.”

   “But it’s what we’re supposed to eat, isn’t it? I mean... everything in me is saying kill someone, kill someone, suck ‘em down and listen to their screams.”

   “I know it,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we think clear on it. It makes us feel like there’s no consequences, and believe me, little bit, there are  _ always _ consequences.”

   “So that’s why you don’t hunt anymore? Consequences?” 

   “Can’t fight back with the chip in me, platelet. Risky to piss folks off when there’s seven billion people I can’t hit back.”

   “So what are we supposed to eat, cows?”

   “Pig,” he said. “It’s pretty close to human.”

   “Sounds bland.”

   “It is,” Spike said. “But it’s safer, both for me with the chip, and you as a fledge. Don’t worry about it. There’s a lot of vamps in Sunnydale who live on it, bit, not just chipped up sods like me. The butchers don’t even look twice anymore someone asks for blood. Hell, there’s plenty of humans buy the stuff. Lotta witches and crap here that use blood. You can get in some variety, a little goat, some otter if you can find it. You get used to it.”

   Dawn scuffed the leaves with her foot. “Sounds like you’re telling me to eat my vegetables,” she muttered. “What’s the third reason?”

   “Your. Sister.”

   “Oh, Buffy’d get it, she knows vampires eat...” she stopped. “Oh. Right.”

   He smiled grimly. “See? Yeah, I could still hunt, some way or another, but so long as I  _ don’t _ , she doesn’t try to kill me. If you can just keep from actively killing anyone, you might not earn a dusty future.”

   “I’d kinda thought you were gonna try and tell me it was wrong or something.”

   Spike looked at her. “Would that matter?”

   Dawn shrugged. “It’s what you would have said when I was still human.”

   “Yeah, well, you were human then.” He scuffed his boot. “And it’s what Buffy would have said to you.”

   She frowned thoughtfully at the ground. “I’m not sure how I’m feeling about Buffy right now.”

   Spike made a bit of a hopeless noise. “You and me both, bit.”

   “No, I mean... I know she’s my sister. And I know she’s the slayer. And I know she’d be full of really yummy blood. And it’s like... I don’t know what this feeling is. It’s like want and fear and twisted-upinness, and....”

   “Yeah,” he said. “Welcome to the club.” He sighed again, looking up at the sky. Clouds were rolling in. Autumn in California was mild, but he still found himself muttering Ezra Pound under his breath as he walked. “ _ Sing goddamn, damn, sing goddamn, sing goddamn. _ ”

   “Huh?”

   “Poem from a Nazi sympathizer,” Spike muttered. “It’s about winter.  _ Damn you, sing goddamn. Goddamn, goddamn, tis why I am goddamn, So gainst the winter's balm. Sing goddamn, sing goddamn, DAMN! _ ” He rubbed his face.

   “You’re still pissed at me, aren’t you.”

   He closed his eyes. “No point.”

   “What do you mean?” 

   “I mean no point! Too bloody late! You paid for it, bit. Congratulations, you had your night on the town. Hooray for you.”

   “But now I’m powerful,” Dawn said. “Now I’m like you, it’s all I’ve ever wanted. What do you mean I paid for it?”

   “Dawn, you’re  _ dead _ , you’re not even...” he stopped and stared at her. “What the hell do you mean, all you’ve ever wanted?”

   “To... not be nothing,” she said. “I mean, Buffy was the slayer, and Willow’s this awesome witch, and you’ve got these superpowers and everything. I always wanted to be like you.”

   “You told me yourself you were terrified of being evil.”

   Dawn smiled at the memory, like it was some silly bit of whimsy from a simpler time. Fair made his skin crawl, it did. “Well, I shouldn’t have been. It’s awesome. And  _ you’re  _ awesome. Thanks for the blood. I feel lots stronger than I did.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Thanks, sire.”

   Spike rolled his eyes. “Don’t call me that. This wasn’t my choice.”

   She took a step back. “You didn’t want me?”

   “Not like this, no.” He kept walking, his hands in his pockets, only to find a second later that Dawn was staring after him, wounded. “Come,” he snapped, order to a minion, and she obeyed, just like she should, and it made him feel even worse. 

   They walked in silence for a long while, and then Spike relented and pulled his hand out so she could take his arm. Her hand slowly slid into his, and slipped between his thumb and fingers, and it was cool and smooth and… and his. God dammit. And suddenly they found themselves clinging to each other, hands clenched, elbows locked, as if the winds of fate were about to tear them apart.

   Spike found himself wanting to cry again, but he still couldn’t show weakness before her, he might lose her respect then. He gripped her hand so tight she gasped.

   “Where are we going?” she asked.

   “Blood,” Spike said. “I need blood, lots of it. The butcher closes in less than an hour, I can’t stop.” He glanced at her. “You could probably use some, too.”

   “And after that?”

   “Dunno. My crypt, probably. Got escape routes and bolt holes, it’s a fair enough lair for the both of us.”

   “And then what?”

   Spike sighed. “Then,” he said, “I go talk to your sis.”

   “And tell her what?”

   Spike closed his eyes. He hadn’t the foggiest bloody clue.

 


	6. Victim

 

   “Where the hell have you been?” Xander demanded. He stepped out of Spike’s way as he came into the front hall. “Do you know what’s been happening here? Willow did a spell, she says Dawn’s gone. Her spirit’s not on this plane, and we’ve been looking, but there’s been no dimensional portals open. She says Dawn might be–”

   “Dead,” Spike said quietly. “I found her last night. Or this morning. Just after sunup. I dusted the vamps what got her. Dawn’s dead.”

   Willow made a sharp sound as her spell was confirmed. Something about her seemed… off. Like she was buzzing with energy while everyone else seemed worn out and drained.

   “Her, uh, her little friend, too,” Spike said. What had been the chit’s name again? His mind was foggy with blood loss and confused grief. “Janice. Her body’s in a... house on the edge of town. Just at the edge of the school bus route.”

   Tara looked like she was about to cry. “Excuse me,” she said. She headed up the stairs, holding her face, and yeah, she was crying, Spike knew. She didn’t seem to think she could do it in front of the others. He didn’t blame her.

   “Where’s Buffy? I need to talk to her.”

   “Buffy’s in the bathroom,” Willow said. “She needed some time alone.”

   Spike nodded. Made sense. It smelt like she’d gotten injured while looking for Dawn. There was slayer blood somewhere. Clean herself up and have a good cry in the shower. He’d done that quite a bit himself when Buffy had been…. 

   “Dawn is dead?” Willow asked. “You’re sure? I was hoping maybe some dimension hopper had just kidnapped her, and–”

   “Yes, I’m sure,” Spike said. “Dead sure.”

   Absolutely dead sure.  _ Dead, dead, dead. _ If he thought it enough, would the word lose all meaning? Would the dead rise up from the grave, freed from the shackles of the word?  _ And pigs’ll come flying out my arse,  _ he thought in disgust. Dawn was dead and turned and sitting in his crypt with a heavy tomb lid against the door, a few quarts of pig blood, and an injunction not to let anyone in except Spike himself. 

   He had hit her with as much dominance as he could, and hoped she’d listen. Any other minion he’d have beaten to get them to obey... he wasn’t sure if he shouldn’t have done that to Dawn, but in this instance he hadn’t. He’d just told her to stay in the god damned crypt, and if he’d found she’d strayed he was going to chain her up next time. She’d sounded hurt anyway, with her “Okay,  _ fi _ ne!” and it had felt like a slap as he’d realized she’d never get that teenage whine out her voice. She’d never fully grow up. Never finish school. Never…. He’d sat her down in front of the telly. He’d finally gotten cable. Stole it from the posh house on the edge of the cemetery, drew the cords through the sewer.

   He didn’t know why he kept focusing on these little details. There were details about everything – the aftertaste of the pig’s blood in his mouth. The pizza stain on Xander’s Hawaiian shirt. The tiny piece of fluff on the edge of Giles’s glasses, as if his handkerchief had gotten caught on the hinge last time he’d cleaned them. The pervasive smell of blood in the house. The sound of Tara’s muffled sobs upstairs. The clink of a tray of tea...

   “Here,” said Anya, carrying in the tray. “This is what we do, now, when people die. We make tea.” She set it down in the dining room and shoved a cup into Xander’s hand. “This is the third time we’ve done this. I think I have it figured out now. When people die we all get together, and someone makes tea. Usually Giles, but I figured I could do that. We drink tea and we talk in soft voices and some of us cry. See? I know it. And then someone says we should try to resurrect them, and then someone else says we shouldn’t, and then usually we decide to do it anyway–”

   “For god’s sake, Anyanka!” Giles snapped. “Have a little respect!”

   She looked bewildered. “But that is what we’ve done,” she said, sounding helpless. “Different times, different ways. How am I supposed to know? It doesn’t make any sense. If the way we’ve been handling death isn’t the way we handle death, then what am I doing wrong?” She looked close to tears. “Really. What am I doing wrong? I don’t understand, someone dies, and no one wants it to happen, and Dawn wanted to bring back Joyce, and Willow wanted to bring back Buffy, and now... aren’t we supposed to want to bring back Dawn? What...?”

   “Anya,” Xander said softly. “It’s okay. Don’t try to make sense of it.” He put out his arm and pulled her into his embrace.

   “We could bring back Dawn,” Willow said. “We could. If I could just get to her body–”

   “Stop it, Willow!” Giles said, trembling with fury. “You truly do not understand the forces you’re playing games with! You could have destroyed the planet with Buffy, and I am still not entirely convinced she’s come back completely intact. Buffy has been... distant and mercurial, and we still don’t know exactly what you did. Dawn was not human, she was a mystical construct of immense power, a key that could rend dimensions. If she has died and her soul has passed on, that power, that key, will have passed through dimensions, to wherever that power belongs. Calling back that spirit would be like....” Words fazed him. “I can’t even fathom the types of energies you’re contemplating playing with. Stop being such a child!”

   “You’re not understanding me,” Willow said darkly. “You can’t fathom the power. I can. Don’t you see that? You don’t have the power, but I do. I –”

   “Shut up, Red,” Spike growled.

   “What?”

   “Stop it.” He’d gone to that place beyond surface temper, where things were cold and deceptively calm. He wondered idly if any of these children had realized that was when he was the most dangerous. “You try to bring Dawn’s soul back, and I will kill you myself.”

    “Are you threatening me?”

   Spike slid himself closer, intimidating. “Yeah.”

   The witch stood and faced him. “I don’t think you know exactly who you’re dealing with, Big Bad.”

   “Stop it!” Xander snapped. “Spike, leave her alone. Willow... maybe you should just... cool it with the resurrection spells, huh?”

   Spike was trembling with rage. After what Willow had done to Buffy, to be casually talking about doing the same to Dawn... and given the circumstances... ugh. Besides, the smell of blood in this house was just driving him barmy. Buffy needed to get on top of the laundry after her patrols, it was a shame she was so damn depressed. “Where the hell is Buffy?” he demanded.

   “Spike, we told you, she’s in the bathroom,” Xander said. “You said you found Dawn? You really found her... dead? You know? For sure, you know?”

   “Yes. I know. How long is the slayer gonna stay up there? There’s a crisis. You said she knew about your spell that said Dawn was...? I mean, you know what happened last time sommat happened to the little bit.”

   “She didn’t go catatonic, not this time,” Xander said. “She was very calm. She just asked all the questions she could about the spell, and then called the police to see if they had any word on Dawn or Janice, and when they said they still had nothing, she asked if Willow had traced any dimensional portals or anything.”

   “There weren’t,” Willow said decisively.

   “Yeah, there weren’t. Then she just said she needed to be alone and went to the–”

   “Oh, bloody–!” Spike cut Xander off with a curse, racing towards the stairs. The rage was gone, washed away by gibbering panic. Buffy. Alone in the loo with the smell of....  He was pounding up the stairs so hard the house shook, and one of the pictures of doors fell off the wall as he flew up to the bathroom and burst through the door. The lock snapped, the door hung off its hinge. There was the sound of protests behind him as the Scoobies followed, only to stop a second later as Spike dragged a weakly protesting slayer out of the blood-tainted water in the bathtub.

   Anya screamed.

   Blood, lots of blood, streamed from the vertical slashes on Buffy’s wrists. She hadn’t undressed. No doubt she’d expected them to find her, and hadn’t wanted to be found naked as well as dead. Spike snapped at someone to hold her wrists while he ripped a towel and wrapped it tight around the first wound. Xander, as it turned out, had jumped on the ball and was trying to stop the bleeding from the other wrist. Spike knocked him aside, barely noticing the twinge from the chip, and quickly bandaged the second wrist, hard, hard as a tourniquet almost, making that bleeding stop. Then he hoisted Buffy up.

   “Should we call the ambulance? Get her to the hospital?”

   “Call them,” Spike said. “But I can get her there faster.  _ GILES _ !”

   “Got it,” Giles said, and held the keys out to Spike who snatched them on his way out the door, a wet and blood-soaked slayer nestled into his arms.

   Spike had her in Giles’s car, and was speeding down the road before he’d even gotten his own door closed. He squealed around the corner as he slammed on the accelerator, the smell of slayer’s blood making his still blood-deprived body tingle like he’d broken out in a sweat. The pig blood in his stomach hadn’t had the chance to work through him yet, and he was feeling the lack. Cars honked. Someone on a bicycle probably got out of the way in time, but the bicycle didn’t survive. The car bumped as it crushed the smaller machine. 

   Buffy tried to pull the towels off her wrists. “Just... let me... die!” she growled at him.

   “No!” Spike snapped. “You are not going there again, dammit! I will see to it they strap you down  _ myself. _ You are not going to die!”

   Buffy’s face crumpled. “Why won’t anyone ever let me die?” she whimpered.

   “Because you’re the best person in the goddamn universe, and we all hate you for it!” Spike snapped. “Yeah, you see?” he said at her glare. “That’s it, get pissed off at me. Gotta live long enough to put the stake in me, yeah?” He swerved around a corner and clipped a delivery truck. He kept driving. “You’re gonna be all right, slayer,” he said. “It’s all gonna be all right.”

   “Dawn’s dead.”

   “I know, I found her,” Spike said. “That’s what I came to tell you.”

   “Thank god,” Buffy whispered, tilting her head back. “There’s no reason anymore. I can just let go.”

   “No!”

   Spike was so furious he vamped out without even realizing it. The next words he growled through his fangs. “You are not allowed to die unless I kill you, slayer, you fucking hear me? You’re gonna fucking  _ live! _ One of us has to fucking  _ live! _ ”

   “Why does it have to be me?”

   “Too late for either of us,” Spike snapped. There was the hospital. He squealed the car to the emergency door and dragged Buffy out. “Triage! Triage! She needs blood!”

   “We got the call,” someone said, and then screamed, stepping back. Spike realized he was still bumpy, turned away, and then looked back, normal faced. The nurse who had caught his vampire face did a double take. “Um. Um. Yeah. We got a call. Is this Buffy Summers?”

   “Yeah,” Spike said, and saw they already had a gurney out for her. He set her on it, and they strapped her down before they dragged her away. “She needs blood! Don’t leave her alone!” They didn’t seem to be listening to him. “She’s suicidal!  _ Don’t leave her alone! _ ”

   He hoped to god they’d heard him. Spike stood shaking. He’d wanted to go with her. He wanted to be with her. He wanted to scream.

   Someone at the admissions desk said, “Her again. You know she came in here a year or so ago, same damn thing. She’d cut her neck that time.”

   Spike was not in a fit state for this. With a roar he knocked over the admissions desk, and the lady screamed. The admissions desk had been bolted to the floor....

   As someone shouted for security, Spike stood with his fists clenched, breathing hard. This was his own personal hell. He was drenched in slayer’s blood, still freaked out from draining himself for Dawn, and Buffy, Buffy, Buffy was a inch from death through those doors, and getting in the way over there would only slow the docs down...!

   “Sir,” said someone at his elbow. “Sir, I’m going to need you to come with me. You have to make a statement–”

   Spike told the security guard where he could put his statement and headed out the door. He meant to go, to leave, to head back to his crypt, to Dawn, to his unlife. But he was covered in blood, he reeked of it….

   And Buffy was an inch from death behind those doors.

 


	7. Patient

 

   Xander was like an inch from passing out. He’d been awake for over forty-eight hours, stressed out and worried, and a lot of that time he’d spent walking. He’d been working on adrenaline for he didn’t know how long, and now it was nearly dawn, and-- 

   Dawn. Dawn. Nearly Dawn. God, poor Dawn Patrol. He felt like a jerk for feeling tired and worrying about his damn feet when Dawnie was… 

   He pushed the thought out of his mind as he pushed open the door to the emergency waiting room. “Hi, we’re here to see about Buffy Summers?” Anya asked. 

   As the receptionist explained that their computer was down because there’d been some kind  of accident with the admissions desk, a cold, strong, and very determined hand grabbed Xander’s shoulder and dragged him into the bathroom.  

   Xander could have broken free from Spike’s grip easily – what was Deadboy Junior gonna do, have migraines at him until he keeled over dead from laughter? – but being dragged into a bathroom meant he didn’t have to think about Dawn or Buffy. It was a nice bathroom, one of those single-seaters that was really big so the handicapped and families with kids could easily fit in it. Spike let go of him as soon as they got inside, shoving a hospital gown into his hands before locking the door and hanging his coat on the door hook. Then he kicked his boots off for some reason.

   Xander frowned down at the hospital gown. “What’s this all abou- Gah!” He looked up just in time to see pale vampire ass as Spike wiggled out of his jeans. “You’re half naked. Why are you half naked?”

   “Just shut up and take your clothes off,” Spike snapped.

   His shirt soon joined the jeans on the floor, revealing him in all his compact, muscley glory. Why did the damn vampire have to be so pretty?  _ Boobs,  _ Xander reminded himself as he tore his gaze away.  _ You like boobs.  _ It was a disturbingly familiar mantra, since this wasn’t exactly the first time he’d seen Spike naked. They  _ had _ been roommates for a while, after all.

   “Okay, you’re upset about Dawn and Buffy. I totally get that. And it’s not that I’m not flattered in a really creepy kind of way, but random gay bathroom sex isn’t going to fix anything.”

   “What the bloody hell are you on about?” Spike looked confused for a moment, then blinked and rolled his eyes. “Oh for… Look, remind me to twit you right proper about this later, for now, just give me your sodding clothes so I’ve somethin’ to wear that’s not… not….” He faltered and stared down at his clothes with a shudder.

_    Okay, something really weird is going on here, _ Xander thought as he started taking off his shirt and pants. Why would Spike actually  _ want _ to wear his clothes? The time he’d been left with nothing else to wear, Spike’d tried to…. Xander swallowed back sudden nausea at the memory of Buffy in the bathroom, bleeding out. They might have lost her. If Spike hadn’t scooped her up and rushed her here, they might have lost Buffy again.

   He glanced down at Spike’s clothes as he handed his own over. That was why. Buffy’s blood had been everywhere, diluted by the water. It had to be all over his t-shirt and jeans. That would be creepy and horrible no matter what, but for Spike that had to be the equivalent of someone you cared about being full of jelly donut filling and oozing it all over you.  

   Xander shuddered, abandoning any thought he’d had of putting them on instead of the hospital gown. They probably wouldn’t have fit all that well, anyway. Spike was both shorter and slenderer than he was and favored tight stuff. Xander would have ended up looking like an overstuffed sausage popping out of its seams.

   There was a moment of awkward silence as they both got dressed – or as close as Xander could get to it in only a hospital gown and his boxers. He frowned down at himself.

   “How exactly am I just supposed to get out of here in this, anyway?”

   “Don’t know. Don’t care,” Spike said shortly, taking his coat off of the hook before carrying it to the sink. He wet a wad of paper towels, wringing the excess moisture out and dabbing at the leather. “Gonna take forever to get this all out,” he muttered. “It’ll smell like Slayer for months.”

   Xander just sighed and shook his head. He was exhausted and so not in the mood to deal with anyone else right now, especially not the Fangless Wonder. He turned and left the bathroom, smiling tiredly as Anya hurried towards him.

   She slowed suddenly, frowning in confusion as she looked him up and down. “I thought we weren’t supposed to play naughty nurse in public? And I don’t even have my outfit here.”

   Xander wasn’t sure if he should wince in embarrassment or smile wider, so he just did both. That was his Anya. Adorable and embarrassing all at the same time. “Were they able to tell you anything about Buffy?” he asked.

   “They think she’s stabilized, but she can’t have visitors yet.”

   He sighed and rubbed his face. He knew he should send Anya back to the apartment to get some clothes for him, but…. He was tired, mentally, emotionally, and physically. He just wanted to go home, curl up with Anya, and… well, grieve. The Dawnster was dead. She was gone, and she was never coming back unless Willow did a spell that he really didn’t think she should do.

   He felt guilty about leaving, but there was really nothing he could do here. Besides, Giles or Willow would be by soon. Someone had to take care of all of the paperwork and stuff, and they were both better at things like that. “Let’s just go home. No point in staying right now.”

 

***

 

   Willow felt a little bit guilty for not rushing to the hospital, but really, what was the point? Xander was already there, and they wouldn’t be able to visit Buffy right away unless she decided to go all Jedi mind trick on the staff. Which was an option, of course, but it could wait. Right now, she had something else to do. Something that would make everything better until she could get to work on resurrecting Dawn. They were all against it now for some reason, but once Dawn was back, everyone would be happy.

_    They’ll thank me and apologize for being so closed minded about everything, _ she thought as she went into her room. Tara was sitting up on the bed, eyes red and puffy from tears. She looked so confused and lost. Willow wanted to take a moment to reassure her, but that wouldn’t really help. The spell she had in mind would. She’d just extend it to affect Tara as well as Buffy.

   “Wh-what’s going on?” Tara asked. “All that noise….”

   “Buffy hurt herself,” Willow answered as she started digging through her supplies. Linden, rose, and lavender for grief.

   Buffy hadn’t just hurt herself. She’d tried to kill herself. To throw away the gift Willow had given her like an ungrateful…. No, no, that wasn’t fair. Buffy still hadn’t adjusted to being free from hell. It had to be kind of like getting out of prison after a long time. The world of freedom felt strange and confusing. She’d seen documentaries about it. And now there was the grief over Dawn added to the mix.

   Willow’s own grief threatened to overwhelm her, but she pushed it aside. There was no reason to grieve. Dawn was just… just on a trip, kind of. And  _ not _ one that was one-way. Not if Willow had anything to say about it.

   “Buffy hurt herself?” Tara repeated in obvious alarm, scrambling to her feet. “Is she okay? What, what happened?

   “She’ll be fine.” Now where was…? Oh, there. She grabbed up a little keepsake box and took out everything but the small lock of Tara’s hair. She put in the single hair she’d taken from Buffy earlier, along with the herbs. “Spike took her to the hospital, but she’ll be okay once I do this spell.”

   “What are you doing?” Tara’s voice was full of the accusation Willow was getting pretty tired of.

   “It’s nothing, just this little spell to lock away grief,” she explained, heading out of their room and towards Dawn’s. Tara followed her. “Well, actually, it’s based on a spell I ran across a few months ago while doing some research. It’s supposed to lock away fear, but I figure a few tweaks, and it should work for grief. I just do this, and Buffy will be all better.”

   She found a strand of long brown hair on Dawn’s pillow and snatched it up to go in the box. Technically, anything of Dawn’s should have worked as a symbol of what was being grieved over, but she liked the symmetry of it being a hair.

   “Willow, you can’t do this!”

   “Yeah, actually, I can,” she snapped, whirling around to glare at Tara. She’d breached the veil of death itself. That should have made everyone  _ more _ accepting of her power, not less. “It’ll be easy.”

   “Buffy is  _ grieving _ . She has a right to her grief. You can’t, you can’t just take it away because you don’t like it!”

   “Again, yeah, I kinda can.” Why was Tara being like this? She understood about magic. Was it jealousy?

   “Okay, fine, maybe you  _ can _ , but just because you have the ability doesn’t mean you have the  _ right. _ Playing with people’s emotions is a horrible thing to do. It… it’s no better than what Glory did to me!” That hit Willow like a slap to the face. How  _ dare _ Tara compare her to that monster? “You’re abusing the magic, Willow. It has to stop.”

   “Is this where you go all intervention on me?” she asked sarcastically, trying to cover up her hurt. “Gonna tell me I have to choose between you and the magic? Because, honestly? I’d probably choose both. Keep the magic and maybe use it to change your attitude!”

   Tara’s face went white at that, and Willow instantly regretted it. The other woman turned without a word and stalked towards their room, every inch of her silently screaming with fury.

   “Baby, wait!” Willow called, hurrying after her.

   She got to their room just as Tara was pulling out a shaker of salt and protective herbs. She poured some in her hand, then, before Willow could react, Tara took the open keepsake box from her and dumped the salt mixture over the contents, rendering them useless for magic unless she somehow got every speck of salt off of them.

   Tara looked into the box, then up at Willow, her eyes full of accusations and betrayal as she picked the lock of her hair up out of it. “You were going to use it on me, too?” She looked close to tears again. “God, Willow, why would you do something like that? Buffy had hurt herself, so I could understand. It’s still  _ wrong _ , but I could understand. But this? You can’t even let  _ me  _ grieve?”

   “I just… I’m just trying to  _ help _ ,” Willow said, frustrated and bewildered by it all. “What’s so wrong with helping? Isn’t that what magic is for? To help people.”

   Tara just shook her head and turned away. Willow watched in growing alarm as she got a backpack out of the closet and started filling it.

   “You’re leaving? Where… where are you going?”

   “Somewhere that’s not here,” Tara said shortly. She zipped up the backpack and slung it over her shoulder. “I can’t be here right now. Maybe tomorrow….” She trailed off and shook her head again before brushing past her. Willow turned in place to watch her go, and Tara stopped to look over her shoulder. “If you care about me or Buffy even a little… if you respect us at all, you won’t do that spell.”

   Then she hurried down the stairs and out the door, leaving Willow behind. Anger and hurt simmered inside of her as she stalked farther into the room. She didn’t understand any of this. She and Tara had always had magic between them, and now it was… well, between them, as in coming between. What had changed?

   She held out her hand, aimlessly gathering power in a glowing ball. Magic was an incredible tool. Why  _ shouldn’t  _ it be used? She sighed and let the magic go before flopping down on the bed. She turned over after a moment and looked at Amy in her rat cage.

   “Lucky you,” she muttered sullenly. “Must be easy to be a rat.”

   Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Huh. Amy had never been shy about using magic. She hadn’t tried any spells to de-rat the other witch since sometime before bringing Buffy back. She was a lot more powerful now. She smiled and lifted her hand to gather her magic.

 

***

   Giles’s hand shook slightly as he poured scotch into a shot glass.  _ Steady on now, _ he told himself, wouldn’t do to spill any. He expected he’d need every drop to get through the day. He took his drink and the bottle to the couch and carefully sat down. It was all too much.

   How many times had it crept in over the summer? The guilty wish that it had been Dawn who had lost her life atop Glory’s tower instead of Buffy. Now Dawn was dead and Buffy in hospital after trying to kill herself. And part of him almost wished she had succeeded.

   As the watcher of the active slayer, he’d always known she was likely to die young. He’d convinced himself otherwise, that this one, his girl, was even more special than the others. That she’d beat the odds somehow. She’d done it once before, defied her written destiny and walked out of the Master’s lair hale and whole. But then it had finally happened.  Then she had truly died. He threw back his scotch and poured himself another. She had died, and he hadn’t even been able to grieve properly. There had been too much to do. Too many others to take care of.

   He’d cracked, of course. It had been too much for him, and he’d left, gone back to England in the hopes of licking his wounds and healing. Then had come the call. Willow had defied all the laws of nature and had dragged Buffy back to life. He should have been overjoyed, filled with nothing but happiness. It was there, of course it was, Buffy was like a daughter to him, after all, but…. He’d looked up, and the Sword of Damocles had been revealed, held aloft by nothing but the fragile thread of a slayer’s lifespan.

   How could he let himself get close again when she was still fated to die young? He couldn’t face that kind of pain twice. Even before the suicide attempt, she’d just been drifting through things, like part of her was still dead. It might have been kinder to just let her go. There had been nothing mystical involved, no portals that might have dragged her soul to hell – a dubious notion he wasn’t entirely convinced Willow had been correct about. She would have gone on to her just reward for all she had done for the world.

   And he…. He would have left again. Left the others to grieve the Summers girls on their own. Left them all to Spike. The bloody vampire was older than him, after all. Let  _ him _ be the adult.

   Maybe he should do it anyway. Just leave them all behind and return home. He sighed tiredly and drank more. He didn’t know what he was going to do. He knew what he  _ should _ do. Take care of everything. He likely would, eventually. For right now, however… right now, he was going to get good and smashed.

   Besides, it was much too late now to change his mind. He was far too drunk to be the least bit sensible or responsible in a waiting room while his slayer recovered… recovered from slitting her own… because her little sister Dawn… Dawnie was…. He needed another drink. Where was…? He found the bottle and poured. 

   He couldn’t see. Why couldn’t he…? He giggled weakly as he took his glasses off, fumbling and dropping the things as he tried to clean them. Brilliant. Bloody brilliant. His glasses were on the floor, and he couldn’t’ve seen anyway, because some bloody fool had opened the floodgates in his skull. He was a watcher, and he couldn’t even bloody see.

   He’d never wanted to be a watcher. He’d only wanted to be some bloke, out making music and having himself a grand time. Fine then. He wasn’t a watcher just now. He was drunk and he was tired and he was just Rupert bloody Giles. That was all he wanted to be.   


 


	8. Visitor

 

   “Are you Mr. Giles?” someone said to the old man across the room.

   “What? Oh, uh. No.”

   “I’m looking for Mr. Giles,” the nurse announced to the room of waiting people. 

   “Giles’s not here,” Spike said, going up to him. “Buffy Summers?”

   “Ah, are you here for Buffy?”

   “Yeah. How is she?”

   “She’s stable. She was brought here in time. She can have visitors now. Are there others?”

   Spike shook his head. He didn’t know why there weren’t others. Well, he’d kind of inadvertently sent Xander away, but he hadn’t come back, and neither had the birds, and where the bloody hell  _ was _ Giles, anyway? “Just me.”

   “I’ll show you up. I’m afraid she may be placed on temporary involuntary inpatient status,” the nurse said, leading Spike through the double doors into the hospital proper. “She can be held under observation for up to fourteen days, but it’s too late tonight to get the papers signed on that. Ideally, we’d prefer it if she would voluntarily commit herself. We’ll get a consult, and do some more evaluations, but for now, as soon as her wrists are healed, she’ll be moved to the psychiatric ward.”

   “She’s not psychotic, she’s just sad.”

   “I’m aware of that. She said that her actions were a result of discovering her sister had been presumed murdered.”

   Spike’s guts twisted. “Yeah.”

    “You’re her friend?” 

    Spike stopped himself from saying, “Mortal enemy,” and instead said, “Yeah.”

    “Do you think she’s likely to try this again?”

    “I don’t know,” he said. Even with all her misery, he’d always thought Buffy the one creature most filled with life and strength and vivacity, more powerful than anything else he’d ever seen, and the idea that she would have just snuffed it out would have seemed as impossible as if she’d suddenly begun to fly. No, actually he could see her flying before he could see her killing herself. 

    But she’d just tried it. 

    “Well. She’s in here.” He knocked on the door. “Visitor for you.”

    Buffy looked up, saw it was Spike, and looked away. “Fuck off.”

    “Any time, love,” Spike said, and he slid inside.

    Buffy looked at the nurse. “I said you could bring in Giles. What the fuck is  _ he  _ doing here?”

   “This gentleman was the only one in the waiting room for you. Do you want us to show him out?” the nurse asked. “You don’t have to see anyone you don’t want to.”

   Buffy looked down at her knees. She was in a hospital gown, but her hair still reeked of diluted blood. They hadn’t bloody  _ washed _ her? Her arms were in shackles, velcroed to the bed, and her wrists were bandaged, heavily enough that they couldn’t be undone easily. 

   “Where’s Giles?” she asked.

   “Dunno, love,” Spike said. “Xander and Anya were here, but he left after I stole his clothes.”

   Buffy looked up, realized Spike was in Xander’s Hawaiian shirt and short pants, his damp coat only folded over his arm, and she laughed in spite of herself.

   “So, is this man welcome?” the nurse asked.

   Buffy sighed, looking resigned. “Yeah, sure.”

   The nurse nodded to Spike and walked away. Spike hung his coat on the hook by the door and pulled up a folding chair. He sat down near Buffy. “You want me to get those off you?” he asked after a long moment of silence.

   Buffy looked down at the shackles which bound her to the bed, as if she hadn’t noticed them. She corded the muscles in her upper arm and ripped the bond off the bed. It had clearly not been designed to hold someone of slayer strength. Then she sagged, looking immensely tired, and her head sank. “Doesn’t matter,” she said wearily.

   “It matters,” Spike said. He gazed at her. “You okay?”

    “Yeah,” Buffy said. “They’re amazed at my recovery rate. They gave me a transfusion, while they stitched me up. Then they hooked me up to fluids, strapped me down with monitors. Everything went back to normal so fast they called in others to gaze in wonder at my EKG. Or whatever the hell it was they were monitoring. They’re not used to slayer healing. There must have been a dozen people in here at one point.”

    “Nice of ‘em to respect your privacy.”

    “You sure didn’t.”

    Spike considered this. He wasn’t going to apologize for saving her bloody life. “I’m evil,” he finally said. “I feel no shame.” 

    Buffy seemed to find that funny. She smiled again, rueful, annoyed, but still a smile. “I finally made them take all that shit off me. I think they only agreed because they were creeped out by me, and didn’t want to see how fast I was healing.” She held up her hand to show the little shunt in the back of it. “They only left this. I think it’s so they can shoot me up with a sedative at a moment’s notice.”

    Spike nodded. “Would they have to?”

    “Depends on how pissed off I get.”

    Spike smiled. “I meant… are you gonna try and do this again?”

   “Don’t see why I shouldn’t.”

   “That wasn’t what I asked.”

   “I don’t... know.” Buffy closed her eyes, staring into the darkness inside. “Always around when I’m miserable,” she said quietly.

   “Yeah,” Spike said. “I kinda know how you feel.”

   “Like someone already dead?” she asked. She stared at the ceiling. “Do you know what I felt... when I cut myself? Relief. The pain was like a lance, and it let out all the poison.”

   “I’ve been there.”

   “Have you?”

   Spike nodded. “Only with me I usually go dancing with the sunlight. Or try to flirt with a slayer.”

   Buffy chuckled again. “I was doing so well,” she said. “Halloween night, remember? I could move. I could breathe. I offered to help Anya in the shop. The light didn’t hurt my head, and the sky didn’t feel so damn heavy.” She sighed, closing her eyes again. “I wish I was dead.”

   “Don’t. Please don’t, love.”

   “Dawn’s lucky,” she said. “She doesn’t have to do this anymore. Each breath feels like knives.”

   “And you see every night stretching out before you, an endless round of emptiness and blackness, and you can’t feel any kind of hope or see any way out, and all there is is this sense of duty, like you can’t shake it or go back on your word or let them down,” Spike said. The words had fallen out of him. He’d been exactly there, not so long ago. “But the idea of the fire... or the blade. It feels soft. Like a blanket, or a safety-net, something other than where you’re at.”

   Buffy stared dead eyed up at the ceiling for a long, long time. Spike just... let her. Silence.

   “I want to kill something,” she finally said.

   “What?”

   “What got Dawn?”

   “Vampires,” Spike said. “A little nest of ‘em, teenaged fledges, turned this last year.”

   “You dust ‘em?”

   “Yeah.”

   “Good. Where is she?”

   Spike swallowed. “Probably where you were, pet.”

   “I meant her body.”

   “Ah, yeah. About that.”

   “I guess it doesn’t matter.”

   Spike was almost relieved she’d stopped him. He hadn’t figured out the best way to say it yet.  _ Yeah, Buffy, your sis is dead, and she was a vampire, so I decided to make her stronger, rather than dust her, and now she sees me as her sire, but I swear, it wasn’t me killed the chit…!  _ Yeah. That was gonna go over roses. It would have been hard enough before Buffy’d gone all self-mutilation. 

   “All the bodies I’ve seen,” Buffy went on. “All the death I’ve caused. All the blood on my hands.”

   “All the people you’ve _ saved _ , pet.”

   “What’s it matter when the one who matters doesn’t make it?” Buffy said. “What do you live for when the thing you love is dead?”

   “For the things she loved,” Spike said. “This I know, Buffy. You gotta live on, for her. You work and you protect and you care for the things she loved. And Buffy, one of the things Dawn loved was you. Do you hear me?”

   Buffy finally turned to look at him.

   “Dawn loved you. Don’t throw away someone she loved. Don’t you  _ dare _ murder her sister.”

   For a long, long moment, Buffy stared into Spike’s eyes. “Fine,” she finally said. “I won’t.”

   “You promise?”

   Buffy’s eyes closed again. “Yeah.” Then two tears leaked out from between her long lashes. “I’m just so tired.” She sniffed. “And my hair stinks.”

   “Yeah, you wanna take a shower? You have your own.” He gestured to it. “Hospital shampoo and everything, it’s quite posh.”

   Buffy smiled at his sarcasm. “Not supposed to get these wet,” she said, holding up her bandaged hands.

   Spike’s mouth went dry, and he swallowed. “Want me to do it?”

   Buffy turned her head and regarded him for a long moment. Spike fought back the urge to deny all lascivious overtones, to say it wouldn’t mean anything and he didn’t care. It would just dig a bigger hole, making the offer sound worse than it was. Yes, Buffy had been coming to his crypt every single bloody night. Yes, they’d been drinking together and watching old movies and sitting quietly on her back porch and chatting about the various intricacies of slaughtering demons and how hard it was to get grave dirt out from beneath your fingernails. Yes, she’d nearly kissed him a few times in his crypt – but nearly wasn’t really. Yes, she had claimed he was the only person she wanted to spend time around anymore. Yes, they’d sat for hours together not even needing to speak, just together.

   That didn’t mean he had any right to offer.

   Then Buffy closed her eyes and sighed. “Please.”

   If Spike had done what he really wanted to in that moment, it would have been to fall into bed with her and kiss her senseless, draw all those sweet tasting tears against his tongue, bury his nose in her blood-tainted hair, lick her throat, drown in her, make her drown in him. Instead what he did was make himself be still. For one more moment. Be still.

   Then, very quietly, he unvelcroed her other hand, bent down, and lifted the slayer off the bed without a word. Gallantly, like with a new bride, he carried Buffy into the hospital bathroom and set her on the plastic chair which sat in the shower. He turned on the water and let it run, then shifted the slayer when the temperature was right, tilting her head back so that her hair was caught by the stream of the shower.

   Pink blood-tinged residue dripped from the ends of her blonde hair, tainting the water as it spilled down the drain. Part of him wanted to lap it up. He ignored that part, because the rest of him, the core of him, only wanted his hands on her, to run his fingers through her soft, blonde hair (think about it later. Remember this later. Fantasize about it later, and  _ down _ boy! Not now!) gently touch her cheek, pull the strands off her shoulders as she leaned back for him, revealing her smooth white throat.... He fought to hold back the fangs.

   Finally her hair was wet, and... and... sod it, he couldn’t do it like this. He took off Xander’s damning Hawaiian shirt and ran his hands through her wet hair again, shirtless, unadorned. He caught her gazing at him as the steam slowly softened the harsh light and hard edges of the bathroom. “There we go, love,” he whispered, his voice caressing her.

   Yes. Her breath caught.

   Her hospital gown was getting wet. “Let’s get that out the way.” He unsnapped it on the shoulders, as they were made to unsnap, and folded it down until it covered her breasts, but not her shoulders. She stared at him, her eyes bright in the harsh fluorescent light. Her lips were slightly parted, and no, he was not going to kiss them. No. Just take care of her. Like when Dru had been hurt after Prague. Just take care of her, be gentle and tender with no expectations.

   “Your wrist is hurt,” Buffy said quietly. 

   Spike looked at it. It was scabbed over, but pretty nasty. “Could say the same to you,” he said, with a small smile. Buffy’s fingers flexed, remembering wounded hands which slayer healing had stolen the scars from. The ones on her skin, anyway. Spike knew the ones in her mind were still fresh.

   “One of those newborns get you?”

   “Long story,” Spike said. “But… yeah. Sort of.” 

   “Must have been a good fight.” She held herself tightly. “Thank you. For finding her. Even if it was too late.”

   “I’m sorry it was,” Spike said. “I didn’t stop, not even in daylight, just kept following scents, rumors, searching the tunnels. I got there just after sunrise, but she was–”

   “Don’t.” Buffy closed her eyes. “Please. Not now.”

   “Okay.” 

   Spike squirted the hospital shampoo into his hands and then massaged it into her scalp, cleaning away the last of the blood, making her hair smell like baby shampoo, because that was all they had. He slid the soap into her hair, rubbing it into the tips, sliding it down, massaging the back of her head, her neck, and damn it, if she saw his erection she wasn’t making a big deal out of it. His hands were on her throat, his fingers on her carotid artery,  _ pulse, pulse _ , under his fingertips, and then he was gently touching her earlobe, and oh, god, this was Buffy. Her beautiful shampoo commercial hair, laced between his fingers. He wanted to sob with how beautiful and how terrible this moment was.

   It shouldn’t have been brought about by  _ this _ . 

   He tilted her head back again, and she sighed as the water passed over her scalp, rinsing away the soap, the last taint of blood and death.  _ Bite her! _ said half of him.  _ Kiss her! _ screamed the other half. And whatever tiny portion of him was able to keep them both at bay turned off the water and collected the harsh, white towel with “Property of Sunnydale Community Hospital” stamped on it, and wrapped it around her head.

   He rubbed and rubbed and rubbed, drying her hair gently, softly, and then he abandoned the towel and just ran his fingers through her hair. He used to do this for Drusilla. Her long dark hair used to pass through his fingers like treacle. Buffy was like honey, like sunlight, like watered silk, and he petted it and petted it and kept back the moans of delight because they just weren’t appropriate, dammit.

   When her damp hair no longer dripped and it turned to gentle curls beneath his fingers he looked up and saw that Buffy’s eyes were closed. Tears were slowly leaking onto her temples. Spike couldn’t keep it in any longer. He gathered her into his arms and held her, like he’d held Dawn earlier, curled up against him as if she belonged there. He wanted to kiss her face gently and swear he’d made everything better, but he knew, he knew if he told her about Dawn now he’d lose this... this. This whatever it was, this peace in grief she had found, as she was now allowed to grieve. She’d been grieving anyway, grieving for heaven, for her death, for her mum, for the life she’d wanted to have, but now with Dawn she was allowed to keep it, make it real, cry and cry and be justified in it.

   Spike murmured to her, little endearments, but he forced himself not to say  _ I love you _ . Every word was  _ I love you _ , every breath was  _ I love you _ , every movement of his hand as he caressed her shoulder, as he held her close, all of it was  _ I love you _ but he kept the words chained.

   Finally she stopped crying, and if she wasn’t asleep, she nearly was. He carried Buffy to the bed and placed her in it, and dammit, he couldn’t help himself. He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, kissing away the salt that clung to her warm, fragrant skin. He... did not kiss her lips.

   He stood back and watched her for long moments as she finally slept, blood loss and shock and she hadn’t slept since before Dawn went missing, he knew. Finally he heard a noise in the passage and went back to fetch Xander’s shirt before the man himself came in and nearly woke Buffy again.

   “Quiet!” Spike hissed, catching him and Anya as they were about to bustle in with their voices and their bags and their flowers and their questions. “She’s asleep. Just you, boy, and be silent. Don’t wake her, but don’t leave, either. Wait until someone else comes to sit with her, at least for a bit. Don’t leave her alone. You, come with me,” he said to Anya.

   “Why?” Anya said as he bustled her down the corridor.

   “Truth? You’re likely to quack and wake her up,” Spike said.

   Anya scoffed and pulled away. “Rude much!”

   “Actually, she needs some clothes,” Spike said, realizing she actually did. “And a toothbrush, and her own shampoo, and... and maybe one of Dawn’s stuffed animals or something,” he said. “They’re not gonna let her go, ‘cause of the suicide.”

   “She has to stay here?”

   “I think so,” Spike said. “And I need to go. I have some things I have to take care of.”

   “What kind of things?”

   “Very important things!” Spike snapped. “Take turns. Don’t leave her alone. But I think... I think she’s gonna be okay.”

   “You really think so?” Anya asked.

   “She needs to grieve,” Spike said. “But yeah. I think she will.”

 


	9. Volunteer

 

   “The thing is, Buffy... it really wouldn’t be that hard.”

   Buffy knew Willow had been talking for a little while, but she hadn’t really heard much beyond the opening spiel. So sorry Dawn’s dead, we all wish she wasn’t, are you feeling okay? That kind of thing. She was focused more on gazing outside. Pretty view out there. It was probably why the guest couch she was sitting on - a narrow wooden platform with a plastic mattress and some stiff pillows meant as a place for family members to rest - was right there near the window. She’d gotten up to sit there when the shrink had come to see her.

   Apparently she was being discharged. Her vitals were already back to normal -- yay for slayer healing, she supposed -- and so long as she wanted to go home, the psychiatrist had decided she wasn’t going to try and tell a judge to commit her. She had stressed that she felt Buffy should voluntarily commit herself, if she still felt she couldn’t handle things at home, and thought she might try to kill herself again. But it was her choice.

   “It wasn’t my choice last time,” Buffy had pointed out.

   The psychiatrist had said that was a different case. Buffy had been a minor, and it was her parents who had chucked her in the nuthouse her that time, not the state. Also, that hadn’t been a case of suicidal tendencies, but of delusions or – and here the psychiatrist had smiled – maybe a teenage girl whose parents were going through a divorce and wanted some attention?

   Buffy had expected her previous record to be a big deal. “Oh, no,” the psychiatrist had said. “You don’t have any of the secondary symptoms of schizophrenia, negative affect or agitation or... well. This is more likely depression and an acute grief reaction. Also, there’s something about Sunnydale. I’m sure I don’t know why, but we happen to have a flux of PTSD sufferers. A lot of... violent attacks by gang members on PCP.”

   Buffy had heard the quiet sarcasm in the psychiatrist’s words, and looked at her carefully.

   “I don’t suppose anything like that has ever happened to you?”

   Buffy searched her eyes. There was nothing there but sympathy. “Once or twice.”

   The psychiatrist nodded. “Schizophrenia affects only about 1.1 percent of the worldwide population. I’ve heard too much in this town to assume everyone’s insane.”

   She’d left after that, saying the choice was up to Buffy, and shortly thereafter, Willow came in. She’d been all sympathetic and cheerful, bringing stupid gifts like she had for Joyce. Buffy was now the proud owner of a classic drinking bird desk toy, and a pair of really tacky and insanely uncomfortable Shiatsu sandals.

   Then Willow had started to chatter. Buffy used to really like her wacky babble, but she couldn’t focus on it today. She’d looked out the window at the sun soaked hospital gardens, and let Willow talk.

   “All we’d have to do is use an obsidian sphere, and I could bypass the urn of Osiris that way. And, seriously, an obsidian sphere is like  _ lots _ easier to get than an urn of Osiris. I’d have to use a really big one, since the energies for Dawn are probably really powerful what with her keyness and everything. The only trouble is going to be tracing her body. If it’s not intact, it’s going to be a lot harder to reform the energies. So, I was wondering if you feel up to doing the spell, or if we should wait until–”

   “Wait, body?” Buffy finally looked at Willow. “What are we talking about?”

   “Dawn,” Willow said. She looked really concerned. “Ooh. I knew you weren’t listening. Buffy, you don’t have to be so sad. I  _ knew _ I should have done that grief spell, first.”

   “Grief spell?”

   “It’s gonna be really hard for me to use your slayer powers if your energies are clouded by grief,” Willow said. “And the longer we wait, the harder it’s going to be to bring Dawn back–”

   “You  _ what _ ?”

   “Bring back Dawnie,” Willow said. “That’s what you said you wanted.”

   Buffy felt sick. Willow wanted to do it to Dawn, now. Drag her screaming and in pain from heaven and plunge her into hell. “I didn’t think that’s what you meant! I just thought it was... wish it hadn’t happened kind of thing.”

   “Well, of course I meant it.” Willow came and sat beside Buffy on the guest couch. “Do you think I’d do any less for Dawn than I’d do for you? We’re not going to let it happen, Buffy. We’ll bring Dawn back, just the same as we did you, and–”

   “No!” Buffy stood up and found herself pacing the floor. “No, no, no, that’s, no, god, Willow! No!”

   Willow looked genuinely confused. “You don’t want to bring back Dawnie?” She stood up and went to Buffy. “How could you not want that? After you know how terrible it was, how could you want Dawn to have to suffer like–”

   “I wasn’t suffering,” Buffy said.

   Willow frowned. “What do you mean?”

   Buffy considered saying it, and just couldn’t. “Don’t, Willow,” was all she said. “Don’t try to resurrect Dawn. It’s not worth it.”

   “It’s not a risk!” Willow said. “God!  You, Tara, Giles, doesn’t anyone have any faith in me anymore? I know I can do it, Buffy! You know I did it, I did it well. With your help, it wouldn’t even be that hard. I managed to tap into the strength of the slayer line to bring you back, and I know I can do it again. Dawn’s not a slayer, so it wouldn’t be quite the same, but if I use you as a conduit–”

   “You’re not going to use me, Willow. And you’re not bringing Dawn back.”

   Willow stared at her. “Don’t you love her?”

   How could Willow even ask that? “Yeah, I do,” Buffy said. “That’s why I’m leaving her where she is.”

   Willow’s face clouded, in a way Buffy found rather disturbing. “Well, you have a pretty weird way of showing it. Just like you have a pretty weird way of showing gratitude.”

  “What are you talking about?”

   “I ripped the world apart to bring you back,” Willow snapped. “I poured my soul through the gauntlet of Osiris, I let him use my body for the birth of the dark serpent, for god’s sake, I slit the throat of the avatar of an Angel of the First Altitude, and you tried to throw all my hard work away!”

   Buffy was disturbed by what Willow was saying, not to mention her eyes, which didn’t look quite… right. “Willow.... my life doesn’t belong to you.”

   “Well, maybe it should!” Then Willow seemed to hear what she was saying. “That... that wasn’t what I meant. It’s just... I... I know you’re sad, Buffy. I just want to make it better. Really. I just want to make everything better.”

   “I know, Will, but you can’t always.” She wanted to grab Willow and shake her, scream into her face that she had to stop trying to fix everything, because she hadn't. But she didn’t. “Don’t try to bring Dawn back.”

   “But I can do it–”

   “I said don’t!”

   The cloud returned to Willow’s face. “You aren’t the great leader anymore, Buffy. You aren’t the most powerful one of us. You don’t get to pick and choose what I do.”

   “Willow–”

   “You’re not my mother,” Willow said. “And I’m not your sidekick.”

   “Am I interrupting something?” Giles’ voice cut through the crackling tension that seemed to be about to ignite the air.

_   Yes, thank god!  _ Buffy thought. “Come in.”

   Giles came in, and Willow scowled. “I think I’m gonna go home,” Willow said.

   Giles looked grave. “Willow, I... maybe you should wait.”

   “No,” Willow said, white faced, trembling, and Buffy knew it was with rage. “I’m gonna go. I’ll... we’ll talk about this later, Buffy. When you’re better and you come back home.”

   Buffy’s eyes closed as Willow went, not sure whether she was pissed off or relieved. Still, here was Giles. Giles looked remarkably grim, now that Buffy’s attention was on him. “What’s up?”

   “Um. Why don’t you sit down?” 

_Uh-oh._ Buffy felt numb as she sat back on the couch while Giles pulled up the chair. No one ever suggested sitting down for good news. _What is it now?_ _Did some demon ho lay its eggs in Xander? Is there an apocalypse brewing?_ It wasn’t the normal time for one, but nothing was normal anymore.

   “Well,” Giles began.  “An anonymous tip from a certain white-haired anonymous tipster led the authorities to find the nest of those vampires who took Dawn. In light of your, um... circumstances, they gave me what information they had.”

   Buffy took a deep breath and steeled herself for what she’d hear. Dawn stuff. At least it wasn’t something new. “Okay,” she said. “So... it’s murder. Or did they think it was wild animals? Are they performing an autopsy?”

   “On Janice, yes,” Giles said, “though they’re fairly certain the cause of death was exsanguination caused by multiple injuries. Uh, bites,” he said. Buffy nodded. He wasn’t saying anything she hadn’t expected. “The trouble is, while they’re certain Dawn was present in the cellar of this nest... um... her body wasn’t found.”

   “Wasn’t found?” Buffy did not like the sound of that. “How do they know Dawn was even there? Maybe it was just Janice.”

   “Some of Dawn’s, um... clothing. Was found at the scene. And... her blood. Um. Rather a lot of her blood, apparently.”

   “Her clothing? Like... her jacket?”

   Giles took another moment, cleaning his glasses like it was the most important thing in the world. “They found her underwear,” he finally said.

   Buffy winced. “Oh.”

   There was a long long silence as this news weighed between them. Then Buffy deliberately closed her eyes, and went flat out swimming in Egypt.  Dawn had snuck out on Halloween night to meet boys with Janice. That’s what it had been. A sweet little tryst with a boy that had been all tenderness and kisses before the vampires had gotten them. Something good before the horror, though she was way too young. That’s what it was. Any. Other. Thought… did not bear thinking.

   “Go on,” she said. 

   Giles nodded. “Well. Dawn has been declared missing, presumed dead.”

   “Missing... presumed….”

   “You know what this means.”

   “That there’s a fairly even chance they turned her,” Buffy said, feeling numb again. “Yeah.”

   “There’s just as much chance that they did not. They could have left her body somewhere, or... or....”

   Ripped it up, gnawed it to bits, played games with it, fed it to some ghoul friend of theirs, the possibilities went on and on. They were vampires. There was no limit to the depravities they could commit. The dark thoughts danced through Buffy’s mind, and she clenched her fists.

   “In any case, as soon as you’re feeling better and get out of hospital we can see if we can track down the... ah...”

   “The body,” Buffy said. “Yeah.”

   She felt exhausted suddenly. And there was now a good chance she was one day going to have to stake her sister.... “If you see her, don’t invite her in,” she said quietly.

   “I couldn’t, anyway,” Giles said. “I don’t live there.”

   Buffy looked up. “Don’t you?”

   Giles opened his mouth, and then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter right now.”

   “I suppose we should get you off the couch,” Buffy said. The idea of gutting Dawn’s room for Giles did not appeal. “Unless you have a lead on an apartment already.”

   There was a tension to Giles face that Buffy didn’t like. “We’ll sort it out when you’re out of hospital.”

   It was what he wasn’t saying that finally clinched it. There was a certain clarity to being completely in a fog. Buffy had no hope left, and she knew it. “You never planned on staying, did you,” she said, her voice dull.

   Giles didn’t deny it.

   “You went back to England, and you liked it there. And you wanted to stay.”

   “You were dead, Buffy. I didn’t expect.... None of this is important right now. Right now you just need to focus on getting better. What do the doctors say?”

   “That my insurance is still covering me,” Buffy said. “Thank god. Mom got me better health insurance than she got herself.”

   “She was more worried about you,” Giles said. “And some of her expenses were covered, you know, it was just that brain cancer is a complicated.... You really don’t have to worry about this. I’ll be at the house, and we’ll deal with it all after you get back.”

   Buffy nodded. “Fine.”

   “I should let you rest,” Giles said, and he came forward and touched Buffy lightly on the shoulder, just for a moment. Buffy smelled whiskey on his breath....

   She was staring back out the window when Xander and Anya came in. “Hey, there, Buffster,” Xander said. “I brought you some flowers.”

   “They’re in a pot,” Anya said. “I made him get one in a pot. It didn’t make any sense buying flowers that were just going to die when you were thinking about dying anyway, and anyway, it seemed like a waste of money. Dying flowers.”

   Buffy closed her eyes as Xander said something in low tones to Anya.

   “Oh. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned your failed attempt at suicide,” Anya said then.

   “Anya!”

   “So, I wasn’t supposed to say sorry, either?” Anya asked. “Honestly, Xander, what are we supposed to talk about? I mean, we’re standing here in the hospital because she slit her wrists, and we were the ones who had to clean the blood out of the bathroom! Am I supposed to forget that?”

   “Anya? Remember what I said about _ tact _ ?”

   “Yes,” Anya said. “It sounded like lying.”

   Xander sighed. “I’m sorry, Buffy,” Xander said. “Anya doesn’t always know what to do in a personal crisis.”

   “Actually, I always like to have lots and lots of sex, but Xander–”

   “Anya!”

   Anya sighed. “Fine. I’ll go and get our parking validated.” She pushed the potted flower arrangement into Buffy’s bandaged hands. “The pot really was better than the vase.”

   Anya left. Xander turned to Buffy. “Sorry about her.”

   “She’s right,” Buffy said. “She’s just being honest.” That had bugged her once, but now it was just… refreshing. No guessing when it came to Anya. Buffy put the pot of African violets and mosses on the windowsill. “There,” she said. “Now it’ll have some light.”

   “Light’s always good,” Xander said quietly. “It keeps things alive.”

   “Not all things,” Buffy said quietly.

   Xander pulled the chair up and put his hand on Buffy’s knee. “I’m really sorry, Buffy. I mean really. I know what the Dawnster meant to you, and–”

   It was the word Dawnster that tipped her over. Dawnster, monster. It had seemed cute when Xander’d first come up with it, back when Dawn was just Buffy’s brat kid sister, but now.... Missing. Presumed dead....

   Xander rubbed her shoulders as she cried, and held the box of scratchy tissues out for her to grab. “I suppose we should be used to this by now,” Xander said. “But I never can be. And I wish I knew how to help, but I never can.”

   “You help,” Buffy said. “You cleaned the bathroom.”

   “Well, someone had to,” Xander said. “And someone had to mow the lawn and take out the garbage and just do all the general stuff on the house. Do you want me to do that until you get back?”

   Xander didn’t realize Buffy was being released today. The truth was, she did want Xander to do it. Forever. “Thanks.”

   “I can’t stay, I just came over on my lunch hour. But are you going to be okay?”

_ No. _ “Oh, yeah,” Buffy said. “You know Buffy. Just keep chug, chug, chugging alone! I... I meant along. I meant to say along.”

   “You don’t have to be alone, Buffy.”

_  But I am, I always am. There’s no one like me. No one... alive. _

   “I got our parking validated,” Anya said as she came in. She blinked a few times at Xander with his arm around Buffy, swallowed, and then shrugged. “I actually did want to apologize for complaining about that whole blood thing, Buffy. I mean, if you were going to waste all my hard work finding an urn of Osiris, I’m glad you did it in a way that we’d stop you.”

   Both Buffy and Xander looked up.

   “I mean, you waited until after sunset, first off, so Spike would have a chance to get to the house, which was smart. And it wasn’t as if you took a bunch of pills or something, ‘cause then you would have just gone to sleep or maybe thrown up or your kidneys would have failed, and we’d never have known about it, instead of with all that blood. At least that way, it pretty much guaranteed that Spike would know something was up the moment he got into the house. I’m glad you didn’t really mean it.”

   “Anya!”

   But Buffy was staring at her. Everything she’d said was true. On the nose true. She  _ had  _ waited until sunset. And she  _ had _ cut herself. She remembered thinking, it had to be blood. As if she were trying to summon him or something....

   “Come on, Anya, time to go.” Xander stood up and collected Anya with another apologetic look at Buffy. “I’ll come back and visit tomorrow, okay? I’ll take care of everything with the house until you get back.”

   Talk stuff out with Willow, when she got back. Figure out what would happen with Giles and Dawn, when she got back. Xander would just handle the basic stuff, until she got back....

   Buffy pressed the button to call the nurse. “Could I talk to my psych consult, please?” she asked when she came.

   “Um... I think she might be on lunch hour. We were about to discharge you.”

   “I know. That’s what I wanted to talk to her about,” Buffy said. “I’d like to voluntarily commit myself. I don’t feel ready to face the world again.”

 


	10. Witch

 

   “Hello?” Tara called out as she came in through the door.

   She’d meant to only be gone for a single night, but her friend Melissa at the college had convinced her to stay with her in her dorm room for a few days. It had been nice, to just fall apart and grieve without having to worry about anyone else. It all still hurt – and would for a long time. Over the summer, Dawn had almost become like a daughter to her, or at least her own little sister – but she didn’t feel quite so raw anymore. She’d even been able to visit with Buffy for a little bit, just those first days.

   She called Willow’s name as she went up the stairs, but didn’t get an answer. She opened the door to the bedroom they’d been sharing and froze. The normally neat and tidy room was a mess. Magic books and supplies were everywhere, along with discarded clothing. This was bad. Very, very bad.

   In the right circumstances, anything could become an addiction. Drugs, alcohol, caffeine, even something as normal and day-to-day as cleaning. It was becoming clear that, for Willow, magic had become an addiction. She was turning to it more and more to make herself feel better. And that addiction was changing her, turning into someone Tara didn’t recognize anymore.

   She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The old Tara would have just let it go. She’d have curled up in a ball, convinced there was nothing she could do, and let it all happen. But she wasn’t that Tara anymore. She had more confidence in herself now. Because of Willow.

   She opened her eyes and headed back down the stairs. She’d call the Magic Box first, and if Willow wasn’t there, she’d check around town. Sunnydale wasn’t very big, after all, and there were only a few places Willow could have gone.

***

   Willow felt powerful. She could go anywhere, do anything. She didn’t know what was wrong with everyone, why they suddenly wanted Dawn dead, and right now, she didn’t really care. She just wanted to have some fun, dammit. The power was there, right at her fingertips. She leaned over the railing of the upper level of the Bronze and wiggled those fingertips, grinning as she changed the band from a bunch of guys to women. There. Much better. 

   Beside her, Amy laughed, waving her own hand over the dancing crowd below and turning several of them into monkeys. A few people stopped and stared, but other than that, there wasn’t much of a reaction. Part of it was good old Sunnydaleitis, but most of it was the “no panic” spell they’d used when they’d come into the club. They were here to have  _ fun _ , not start up something that would end up with them about to be burned at the stake. Again.

   “Didn’t like the band, hm?” a voice said from behind her. She turned to see a man sauntering towards her. He looked vaguely familiar, though her attention was more on one of his friends. Was that Jonathan? Huh, he had friends now? Miracles did happen, apparently. Good for him. “I like them better this way, too. Though, um…” he smiled and licked his lips, like he thought he was all that and a bag of chips. “I think I like you even more.”

   “I have a girlfriend,” she said flatly. The way he was looking her up and down took some of the enjoyment out of the evening.

   The man’s face hardened. “Oh, so you think you like girls, huh?” He reached out to brush her cheek with his finger. “You know what I think? I think you just haven’t had a chance to ride the right cock.”

   Ugh. So this loser thought he was the right cock, huh? Willow smiled suddenly and twitched her fingers, directing her magic.

   “Hey! What did you…? What’s happe-  _ bwa-cuk! _ ”

   “Warren!” the guy who wasn’t Jonathan called out, rushing towards the angry and confused rooster his friend had become.

   “Nice one, Will!” Amy said with a snicker as they turned back to look down at the crowd.

   Willow watched the silly, powerless little people mill around down there while Jonathan and his friend squawked over the rooster in the background.

   “Oh… Oh, alas, poor Warren. He was the best of us!” The kid fawned melodramatically over the cockerel. “Can you fix him?” he asked Jonathan. 

   “I don’t know. Maybe… but it would take a long time to find the right spell. Maybe even years.”

   “Oh, oh, look over there!” Amy pointed down at the dance floor, where two guys seemed to be fighting over a girl. “That looks like something we can play with. You take the girl, and I’ll take the guys.”

   “Don’t worry, Warren, we’ll take you home and get you a nice coop.”

   “And maybe some hens.”

   “Yeah, sure. A nice little flock of hens. He’d like that!”

   Willow grinned and turned the girl below into a miniature giraffe while Amy’s magic soon had the two guys making out with each other. She’d almost forgotten how much fun it was to do spells with another witch. When had she stopped doing them with Tara?  _ Why _ had she stopped doing them with Tara?

_    Because I was busy with the resurrection, _ she realized. Tara had come to her a few times with spells and herbs she had been working out for fighting vampires, and Willow had just sent her away with the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head. Tara had eventually stopped coming to her, instead talking about her projects with her usual slaying buddies Giles and Spike. 

   Well, when Tara came crawling back home, they’d start doing magic together again. Stuff that was a lot more fun than just lifting roses. She waved her hand absently and sent random people floating into the air as she thought of all the ways she could make Tara fly. Then Willow froze.

   There, near the door, was Tara herself. Staring up at the floaters and looking mad as hell.

 

***

 

   Tara felt like she was going to be sick. People had been turned into animals, stretched out of human proportion, were doing strange and unnatural things like glowing or dancing on table tops. Magic pulsed through the very air, tugging even at her. She suspected it was a spell meant to keep everyone calm. She’d come prepared, though. Along with some crystals charged with anti-vampire spells, she was wearing protective charms to keep her emotions and thoughts from being swayed against her will.

   She’d felt guilty and paranoid when she’d set it all up, but now…. God how she wished she’d just been paranoid. She looked up towards the balcony as people started floating. There was Willow, the knight in shining armor who had taught her that there was more, that she didn’t have to be a cringing victim. She was just leaning over the railing and acting like she hadn’t a care in the world. Did she really not see what was wrong with what she was doing?

   Tara took a breath, squared her shoulders, and strode towards the stairs, barely noticing the two young men hurrying past her, holding a chicken and talking animatedly about avian life spans and a quiet future in farming as they headed outside. She loved Willow, and she wasn’t going to let her do this anymore. She made her way up the stairs and through the much thinner crowd on the upper level. Then she called out to her girlfriend.

   “What do you think you’re doing?” she nearly spat as Willow turned to face her. Tara was surprised by her own tone. This wasn’t anger she was feeling this was grief. 

   Willow gave  a flash of guilt, followed by a look of defiance. “Well, Tara. I’m just trying to take my mind off of things by having some fun. Aren’t you the one always claiming we need to experience our grief? This is me grieving the fact that all of you seem happy that Dawn is dead!”

   Tara flinched as if she’d been struck. How could Willow say that? How could she possibly believe that? Tara’s heart ached over Dawn, and even just thinking about her right now was almost enough to have her breaking down in tears right there. But she  _ knew _ bringing her back would be the wrong thing to do. This wasn’t like Buffy, who had been lost in a hell dimension. Didn’t Willow understand that? Death was only a tragedy to the living. The dead deserved the peace they’d earned, not to be dragged back.

   “This isn’t a grief reaction. This is… this is a spoiled child acting out and hurting people!”

   “It’s not like I was going to keep them this way,” Willow said. “It’s just a little fun, just for tonight.” 

   Tara stared at her. “Just for tonight? That’s not fun, Willow, it’s bullying! How would you like it if someone came in and started transmogrifying and manipulating you? Or Buffy, or  _ me _ ?” 

   Willow flushed at that, whether from shame or anger, Tara honestly didn’t know. Once, she would have been absolutely sure it was the former. “It’s not the same,” Willow argued. “I’m just….”

   “We’re just having a little fun,” the woman she’d been doing magic with interrupted. “We aren’t hurting anyone, so just back off.”

   Instead of cowering and apologizing like she would have done a couple of years ago, Tara gave the woman a cold look and kept her attention on Willow. “Who is this?” It was almost funny, in a bleak, horrible kind of way, but the possibility of Willow cheating on her didn’t make the top five list of things that were very wrong here.

   “I’m Amy,” the woman said. “We’ve met. Sort of.”

   “It’s rat Amy,” Willow clarified. “I fixed her. That’s how powerful I am now. If you’d just believe in me, I could fix everything.”

    “It isn’t about believing in you, Willow! I know you’re powerful. I can see that. But what you’re doing with that power…. It makes me sick. You’re using these people like they’re your personal playthings. You’re, you’re  _ violating _ them. Now undo it. Undo it all.”

   “Look, you selfish bitch,” Amy snapped, “just because you have a stick up your ass doesn’t-” 

   “Amy, stop,” Willow said, reaching out her hand. The oppressive weight of the magic was suddenly gone, and everything in the Bronze was back to normal. Tara just hoped no one affected had left before this.

   “Ugh. I can’t believe you just gave into her like that,” Amy said in disgust. “You can’t let other people run your life. I’m so sorry, Willow. I’m not going to stand here and watch... this. I’ve been a  _ rat _ for three years, I have other priorities. I’m heading out of here. You want to have some fun again, you know where to find me.”

   They watched in silence for a moment as Amy stalked off, then Willow glared at Tara. “This doesn’t mean I answer to you. You don’t own me.”

   “No,” she said, voice harsh. “I don’t own you. But I  _ do _ own myself. What you’re doing is wrong and dangerous. Magic is not a toy. People are not toys. And until you can see that….” 

   Her throat closed for a moment, refusing to let her finish. She couldn’t do it. Willow was her strength. She was nothing without Willow.  _ That isn’t true, _ a little voice inside insisted.  _ Willow unlocked the strength you already had. Use that. For  _ her.

   She took a deep breath and looked Willow right in the eye. “Until you can realize that, I… I can’t be around you.”

   “Tara… what are you saying?”

   “What you said earlier. You have to make a choice. Me or the magic.” She smiled, dark and sad. “And don’t even bother trying to make me change my mind. I’m protected against that.”

   “Tara, baby,” Willow began. 

   But Tara had already turned her back and was on her way out.

   When she got out to the alley she leaned against the wall and grabbed her head. Had she really just done this? Did she really just… break up with Willow? Oh, gods and goddesses, what did that mean? But she couldn’t back down, and she couldn’t go back, and she couldn’t live like this anymore, scared of putting a foot wrong, scared of… of everything. Willow had taught her she didn’t have to be.

   When Willow had taught Tara that she didn’t have to just accept abuses… had she expected Tara to turn that back on her? 

   She didn’t know what to do. She needed to go home… no, not home now, because she’d broken up with Willow, and Willow had been Buffy’s friend, so Buffy’s house couldn’t be Tara’s anymore. But she needed to go back there and get the rest of her stuff and… 

   But Willow was probably going to be going home soon, and… ugh. She’d go back to Melissa’s later tonight. She’d get her stuff tomorrow, some time when she knew Willow had a class. And now….

   Now, she really should go see to someone else. Because Amy had been a little bit right in her selfish comment. Tara had been focused inward on her own pain. That was part of grief and natural, but now it was time to help someone else. Because there was at least one person who would be grieving over Dawn completely alone. Her demon fighting spells ready to protect herself as she went through the cemetery, Tara headed towards Spike’s crypt.    


 

 


	11. Vampire

  Dawn was bored.

   B. O. R. E. D. She traced the words into the dust with her foot, knowing that Spike would find it later, in the corner of the crypt, and probably be pissed.

  Being a vampire was not what she’d thought it would be.

  For one thing, she loved Spike. Really, really, really loved Spike. Like  _ so _ much more than she had when she was a human. She’d always had this kinda... hero-worship thing going, and she knew she did, because he  _ was _ kinda a hero, and he was really cute, and he wore cool leather coats and stuff. And also, nearly died to protect her, at least twice. Tends to make for the hero-worship pretty hard. But the way she felt about most things had changed now that she was better than human, and Spike had gotten a lot of that.

  When she’d first seen him, she’d been just terrified. It wasn’t scared the way she’d been scared of him when she was human and he was still unchipped and deadly, because that was just kind of an “Akk, he could kill me” kinda vibe, and Dawn had felt that vibe from a lot of different scary things, and hell, even Buffy had that vibe sometimes. And, honestly, having hot cocoa with someone while he cried about his ex to your mother kind of watered down the sense of threat. But once she was a vampire, there was something different. Way different, about  _ him. _

  It was like when she saw him, she knew there was a word that should be connected to him, but in a language she didn’t know, ‘cause she only knew human languages, (and really, only English, because she never really studied in Spanish class) and this word, this would have been something pure demon.  _ Master _ was close.  _ Big Bad _ was actually closer, which was probably why Spike used it all the time, because not only  _ was _ he that wordless word, but he  _ knew _ he was that wordless word, which was an amalgamation of Elder and Stronger and Dangerous and In Control and all the things she, Dawn, wanted to be and knew she wasn’t yet. Actually, now she thought about it,  _ Señor _ was probably the closest word she knew to it, and that was Spanish.

  So her first impulse was  _ run! _ and her second was actually  _ kneel! _ which was really stupid, because even though she’d really liked Justin, and he’d been her sire and all,  _ he _ hadn’t had that effect on her. She’d known he was stronger, and she should try not to piss him off, but it wasn’t like  _ this, _ he wasn’t like  _ Spike! _ She had been shocked and terrified when Spike hadn’t dusted her right off.

  But the thing was, she hadn’t been able to think real clearly then. She’d known Spike was pissed at her for some reason, but she couldn’t figure out why, and she didn’t know what to do other than try and placate him. She’d been finding it really hard not to grovel at his feet, but she’d been pretty sure that would have totally gotten her staked.

  And then he’d sired her. Or resired her. Or whatever that thing was, which had hurt, and then scared the fuck out of her (Dawn still thrilled inside when she let herself use swear words she’d never have used before, because they would have made her blush when she was still human and weak and blushy) and then tasted really, really, really good. And when she’d opened her eyes after that, the whole _Señor_ thing had been even worse, but more immediate, because he didn’t just feel like _a Señor_ but like _her_ _Señor._ Or maybe the other way around, she was _his_. She was his, she was completely his, and she just wanted to collapse into him and be close to him and follow him and worship him and call him Sire. Or Daddy. But she thought he’d get really pissed if she called him Daddy, so she sometimes called him Sire, but he didn’t seem to like that, either.

  Because that was the thing. Sometimes Spike seemed to love her. And sometimes he seemed to hate her. And she was never sure which it would be.

  When he’d finally gotten back that first day, he’d been wearing Xander’s clothes, and his coat smelled like blood. He’d gone down into the tunnels and turned on a spigot that was down there, standing under the spray of water in the sewers for like an hour. Or it had felt like an hour. She didn’t know, but when she’d followed him, and he caught her standing there watching him naked, he’d thrown a rock at her, and it hit her in the head. She’d run back to the crypt, through the heavy door that Spike had installed between the sewers and his lower level, and when Spike got home she’d complained. “I’m bleeding.”

  “Good!”

  “You hit me,” she accused.

  “I’ll do it again. You give a bloke privacy in the shower, yeah?”

  And when Dawn had laughed, “You say  _ priv-acy _ like Giles does. Like  _ privy _ ,” Spike actually had hit her. Just the once, and she stopped laughing. Right. No mocking the accent.

  Then he’d given her some more pig blood, which... ew. It was like trying to live on oatmeal, when you knew there was fresh pizza, like, right there on the counter. Or... well, out there on the street, walking around and being all alive and stuff. And then he’d shown her how to put burba weed in it, and it did taste better like that. And they’d joked and laughed about blood recipes, and she’d thought things were doing okay, because it was just like when they shared cookies in the kitchen when she’d still been human. Except when she said maybe he should suck on his coat, because he’d clearly gotten  _ someone’s _ blood on him, he’d told her to shut up and go downstairs and leave him the hell alone.

  And she’d done it. She’d wanted to argue, but she also just wanted to please him, so she did it. She found herself doing that a lot.

  He’d set her up in a coffin to sleep in, which she didn’t like, but he said he didn’t have another bed for her yet, and there were plenty of coffins around the crypt. It smelled like earth and a very old corpse, which was kinda neat, but also kinda... she didn’t know. Sad?

  “Can’t I sleep with you?”

  “No!”

  “It’s a big bed.”

  He’d raised his fist again, and she shrank back, and he let it fall. His face was harder and meaner than she’d ever seen it when she was human. There was this childlike glee Spike had always had in the world, and in her, and now he didn’t seem to have it. She fell onto the bed now, while he was gone, bouncing on it, ruffling up the pillows. He’d know she’d been on it, and she knew she wasn’t supposed to be, so maybe he’d punish her for it? Or maybe he’d let it be? She could never be sure which he was going to do. Sometimes she wanted him to punish her, just because she knew he cared what she did, then. Being sure Spike cared… that was the most important thing anymore.

Sometimes he seemed to care. And sometimes he just seemed to want her to shut up all the time. He didn’t touch her or play with her or hug her as much as he did when she was human. They’d used to go rambling together, when she snuck out of the house. She wasn’t allowed to sneak out, now. It was like she was grounded or something. Spike never let her go  _ anywhere _ now.

  Well, okay, he’d brought her with him out to the cemetery once, because he said she probably needed to get in a little violence, and there was a suspicious grave, and Buffy wasn’t patrolling right now, and that had been  _ awesome! _ They’d dragged this newborn right out of the grave, and Spike had given her pointers on how to fight him, and eventually she got the stake in him, and then he was gone, just _ gone _ , she had snuffed out a life, and it was so great she’d just howled with the joy of it.

  And Spike had actually smiled. He’d _ smiled _ at her, and that was so rare now, she’d just glowed with it. “There you go, little bit. We’ll make a warrior out of you, yet.”

  Dawn had been amazed that she was stronger than the newborn, when he was like this big muscle-bound guy, and really she was only three days old herself. “Blood,” Spike had said when she’d asked. “You weren’t made like a minion, you were made proper.”

  “So... if you’d left me like you’d found me, I’d have been weaker than him?”

  “Likely,” Spike said. “If you’d been real lucky and lived a few decades you could have got strong. It’s not like being born of a master race or shit like that, it’s just....” He shrugged. “There’s lots of factors in it. Who you were, who sired you, how well they did it.”

  “And you sired me?”

  “Resired you, yeah.”

  “And that matters because you’re strong?”

  “Yeah, sort of. Dunno if it would have worked if you hadn’t still been newborn. Figured I’d try it. Angelus did the same to me, once. I survived it.”

  “And you sired me right? I mean, properly. Like, with enough blood and all?”

  “Yep.”

  “And what about who I was?”

  And then Spike’s face had closed down, and he got hard again, and he said, “We don’t talk about that,” and then he _ didn’t _ talk about it again, at all, and whenever she asked, he’d hit her.

  And last night he’d brought her a dog, just so that she could kill some live blood, and that was nice, nicer than the cold pig blood anyway, but dog didn’t taste real good, and the fur got caught in her teeth. But the heartbeat had been really, really intense, and the way it struggled when she hurt it. Yeah. She’d liked that. And again, Spike had smiled at her. He had these secret smiles, these moments when he seemed really proud of her. And then he’d go all hard-faced again. And she had no idea which was going to come next.

  And she missed him. It was stupid, it was really dumb, whenever he went out without her she really, really missed him. There was something inside her that just wanted to follow at his heel, and watch everything he did, every move he’d make, every step he’d take, just like the damn song, and copy it, and try to do it. She had touched up her nails. Black. Like his. And she’d stolen his t-shirts. And she’d asked where she could get a coat like his (another one of those questions which randomly turned his face hard again). And now that he was out again, doing something – she didn’t really know what – she wished she was out with him, dogging his footsteps, trying to do what he did.

  Sometimes, when he was gone, she’d lie on his bed, like she was doing now, and try to figure out why. ‘Cause even with all the hero-worship she’d had, she’d never felt that way when she was human, not about anyone. 

  And then she remembered something she’d heard about baby ducklings, and how they’d follow at the heel of the mama duck, even across traffic, because they just kind of  _ had _ to to learn where the food was and how to be a duck and all. And she wondered if it was something like that. Because she  _ was _ a newborn, and he  _ was _ her sire, and she  _ did _ have to learn how to be a vampire, and Spike really, really, really did know how. Because he was a  _ Señor _ . Or an elder. Or a Big Bad. Or whatever.

  He’d been gone now for hours. He’d said he was gonna go get some blood, and he wanted to check on some things. Dawn kinda thought that meant he’d wanted to check on Buffy. She knew he had this thing for Buffy, which she’d thought kinda sexy when she was human, but now that she was a vampire it seemed really dangerous and stupid and almost icky. Though... that didn’t actually make it any less sexy.

  That was the other thing that bugged her. She couldn’t go out, because someone might tell Buffy. And he didn’t think she was ready for that. Dawn turned her mind away from Buffy quickly, because she didn’t like thinking about her, for two reasons. One, the person she had been, which Spike had told her they weren’t going to talk about. And the other was Spike.

  Because Dawn loved Spike. And she wanted him to love her.

  She’d have fucked him if he’d wanted her to, but he didn’t seem to. Which was annoying, because how else could she tell if he loved her? Those secret smiles and those things he tried to teach her... she couldn’t rely on them.

  The door upstairs opened and Dawn jumped off Spike’s bed, making quite sure to mess it as she did, so he’d  _ know _ she’d been there. “Spike!”

  She climbed quickly up the ladder, just as another female voice also called out, “Spike?”

  Dawn knew it wasn’t Spike, now. For one, the voice, and for two, now that she was upstairs she could smell it, even through the scent of the candles – Spike was _ crazy  _ about his candles. It took him like an hour every god damn night to light them all. He did it like a ritual, lighting one taper and then carefully hitting candle after candle after candle after, “Why don’t you just get another extension cord like for the TV and get a damn lamp? You have them downstairs.”

  Candle after freaking candle. He didn’t even ask her to help him light them.

  But through the smell of the wax and the fire she could smell human. Tasty, youngish human, and, “Oh, hi, Tara!”

  Tara took one look at Dawn, and her mouth fell open. “Dawn?”

  “Yeah! Hi.”

  “Dawn, what are you... are you...? Oh, god, Dawnie! We thought you were dead!”

  Dawn grinned at Tara. “Eh, I’m all right. How’s stuff at the house?”

  “Everyone’s been so... Dawn, what are you doing here?”

  “I live here now,” Dawn said. “Well, sort of. Spike’s looking after me.” She had already managed to get between Tara and the door, because that was what she was supposed to do. She’d already kind of figured that out. Tara was right there, and it wasn’t like Dawn was leaving the crypt, right? That was what Spike had said, don’t leave the crypt. “I like your shirt,” Dawn said. She would definitely take it off Tara and keep it, because first off, trophy! First human kill! and second off, she really had always liked that peasant top.

  Tara looked confused now, and yeah, there was a gust of fear-smell (or Dawn assumed it was fear smell. Spike had been keeping her away from humans, really). “Um. That’s good,” Tara said.

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a crystal. Which probably  _ wasn’t _ good, not for Dawn’s purposes, so she realized she’d probably better jump Tara  _ now _ before she went all witchy on her, because really, Dawn wasn’t going to let this opportunity go by.

  “Is... is Spike here?” Tara asked.

  “Nope. That’s okay. He’s chipped up.” Dawn let loose her fangs. “He wouldn’t be able to help, anyway.”

 


	12. Minion

 

   Spike was almost dancing on the way home. He was excited, bewildered, elated, confused, and... so, so bloody frightened. But worth it! Oh, god, was it worth it. Every time he closed his eyes he could feel it again, feel  _ her  _ again, that heat, that hunger, sending thrills down his belly that made his legs quiver and his heart warm as if he were alive again.

   Buffy had kissed him.

   He’d been out of the loop, really, trying to keep Dawn in check. He’d sort of gathered that Buffy was still in hospital, but he hadn’t had time to see her again. He was on Dawn Patrol almost every single moment.

   Full on minion training was a trick with this one. He couldn’t handle her quite the way he’d handled them in the past. Most minions he used as fodder, guarding doors and running errands, and only occasionally would he keep a brain, or a slightly more clever minion, as an overseer for the others. When he had a brain, he spoke almost exclusively with them. He never even bothered to talk to the lesser scabs, unless they did something to displease him, and even then he usually just hit them. He never trained them to do more than cower before him. He only ever used them for what they were already good at.

   But Dawn... he wanted her perfect. So he was teaching her everything he knew; how to fight, how to sense the sunlight, even how to kill – she’d been so cute trying to take out that dog. He hadn’t even been able to stop smirking long enough to tell her she was doing it wrong. It was like watching a toddler try to do bricklaying; she had the concept, but everything else was just...  _ cute _ ! He had such plans for what to teach her: anatomy, reading a vic, scent tracking. Hell, he might even see if she took to thrall like Dru had. (He himself couldn’t do it except sometimes in the bedroom. Wasn’t his gift.)

   But mostly, he couldn’t beat her like you were supposed to with minions. He’d hit her sometimes, and of course she could take it, and expected it, ‘cause she was a vampire. But... she was also Dawn. Or what was left of Dawn. So he had to keep walking a fine line between respecting her residual humanity and being demon enough for her to keep her respect for him.

   It wasn’t exactly easy.

   Sometimes, it was true, he hated her. She’d do something that Dawn would never do, even at her naughtiest, like walk around the crypt completely naked without a lick of modesty, or scrape like a sodding servant, or discuss the time when God and all His works would be destroyed and the demons would reign supreme, and he found his skin crawling. Then he wanted to hit her – and sometimes did, if she gave him any excuse at those times – punishing her for Not Being Dawn.

   Then sometimes she  _ was  _ Dawn. The way they’d laugh over a movie or she’d do something strange with a recipe, like add cookie crumbs to the blood, or she’d try to cheat at cards and utterly fail at it. Those times were actually worse, because he could forget, for brief seconds. And then, when he remembered, the grief would strike like a cobra. And as a vampire he knew he shouldn’t be feeling grief anyway, but that was the thing. Dawn had become more than just another walking happy meal. She’d become  _ Dawn _ , like Buffy had become Buffy and more than a slayer to kill. And so he felt grief for her, just as he had for Buffy, and the feeling left him disconcerted.

   But then there were the in-between times. Like when he’d let her kill the dog he’d got from the shelter, or when she’d fought that vampire, or when he caught her catching mice in the lower chambers and teased her about it, and she threw one at him, and they had a lovely game catching the things and chomping their heads off. (Killing mice only made his chip twinge, small favors.) At those times she wasn’t really Dawn, and she wasn’t just an evil demon. She was this Dawnlike-vampire-thing, neither one nor the other, and when she hit that sweet spot… she was  _ his _ . His vampire child, and she was strong and fun and playful, and she was something different, and he loved her.  _ Her _ , not just the person she had once been.

   He actually loved her. He’d been afraid he wouldn’t be able to.

   The hate and the grief and the love twisted him up inside, and he’d decided he couldn’t keep it hidden anymore. He needed to tell Buffy.

   So he’d gone to the hospital, and they let him up to see her because she wasn’t under any kind of restricted visitation, and visiting hours lasted until seven. She’d been in what they called art therapy. She was drawing concentric shapes, growing darker and darker in the outer rings, and there were some kind of strange cloud shapes in the darkness, things he couldn’t quite identify. What struck him, though, was the little square of light in the center. It looked like the view from inside an open grave.

   Buffy looked up when he came in, and then... good god. She  _ blushed _ . She put down her charcoal, filed away her sketch pad, and left the group. Her hair was unwashed and soft, braided loosely out of her face. She wore baggy sweats which Spike at least found adorable, as if she had just tumbled out of bed or something. The sleeves of her sweatshirt were long enough to cover the bandages that still graced her wrists.

   “Hi.”

   “Hi.”

   They stood awkwardly for a long moment in the doorway of the common room.

   “You’re looking better,” Spike said. “They put you in here?”

   “I... kinda put myself in here,” Buffy said. “I wasn’t really ready to face it all out there yet. I–”

   They were interrupted by a nurse who pushed through with a clipboard. “We’re standing in the doorway,” Buffy said. “Um. I wanted… to talk to you. You... wanna go for a walk?”

   “You can?” Spike said. “Door was locked when they showed me in here.”

   “I can sign myself out,” Buffy said. “To the garden, or the computer lab. They have a crappy library. If I have someone with me I can even have access to the cafeteria, it’s a rollicking fun Buffy adventure.” She went up to a nurse’s station, told them where she’d be headed, and they passed her another clipboard. She signed her name and pulled him to a side door, where she waited until they sounded a buzzer, headed down some stairs, and out into the gloaming.

   The sun was still teasing the edges of the hills, but the shadows were pretty long. Spike tested the orange light, found it only slightly uncomfortable, and took a quick jump to the nearest shadow.

   “Sorry,” Buffy said. “Wasn’t thinking. You want to go back in?”

   “Na,” Spike said. The garden seemed unoccupied apart from themselves, even if it was surrounded on three sides by more walls, and a fence on the other. Definitely worth the risk of immolation to have time alone with Buffy. 

Buffy wandered the gravel in the only path there was, which led in a circle back to the door. At the far end it led to a little bronze fountain, which featured a small child of nondescript gender peering over the water at a bronze sparrow-like bird. The bird was so well wrought Spike thought at first it was real, and was surprised when it didn’t fly away as Buffy approached it. Spike still had to dart from shadow to shadow, but he kept pace with her. “Do you like it here?”

   “It’s great,” Buffy said. “The garden is the best spot, particularly when it’s empty like this.”

   “I meant here in general.”

   “No,” Buffy said.

   “So why stay?”

   Buffy perched on the edge of the fountain and touched the slightly chlorinated water. She cupped a handful and let it trickle down back into the fountain, glimmering droplets in the quickly fading light. “Ask me about the food.”

   Spike sat down. “How’s the food?”

   “We had stuffed ravioli tonight,” Buffy said. “At five. Stuffed with what, exactly, I’m not sure, apart from some kind of oil. On the side we had cold limp carrots and something that might once have had something to do with a potato. And tapioca with skin on top and a teeny-tiny container of high-fructose corn syrup which called itself cranberry juice. But I didn’t have to make it. So it was all great.” She took a deep breath and stared up at the sky. Spike joined her. A few stars dusted the deepening blue.

   “I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me about the food,” Buffy said. “Xander and Giles and Willow. They keep coming and being so perky, but they never ask me about the food. Or why I’m here.”

   “Did you want to tell them?”

   Buffy shook her head. “No.”

Spike stared at her. “You’re trying to protect them. From what they did. Maybe if they knew where you were, they’d be more… understanding.”

“If they knew where I was, they wouldn’t be able to understand at all. People can fathom hell. They can’t fathom heaven. I can’t… even understand it anymore. It’s like I lose a little more each day, and… maybe that’s good? Maybe… maybe I can’t function here unless it’s gone from me. But it just feels like everything is taken.” She shook her head. “Sorry. They have me in this group. Every morning. And everyone’s telling all their stories, and… I haven’t said anything yet, but even without all the monsters and the magic… it all seems like everyone’s in their own personal hell.” She shrugged. “You’re the only one I can tell this stuff to.”

   Spike took a deep breath. “I actually came to tell you something.”

   “I wanted to tell you something, too,” Buffy said. “And I think I might lose my nerve, so just... let me get on with it. Halloween night... Xander announced he and Anya were getting married. And I felt really happy for them. Life beginning and all. And then I just felt this... this crashing loneliness and...” Her breath was coming fast already. “I went to take you up on your offer to patrol, because I thought maybe a good fight would fix it, you know? But I’ve just been going through the motions of everything, not feeling anything, just... just numb. And when I don’t feel numb there’s this twisting pain and emptiness, and... and I saw Xander and Anya and their potential to be so happy together... and then I saw a couple out together, just... arms around each other, and they looked so perfect I… I almost wanted to kill them.”

   She looked down. “I know that doesn’t make any sense.”

   “Sure it does,” Spike said. “I’m a vampire, love. Why do you think we kill? We see life, and we want it. We don’t have it, and we want it.”

   “I want it,” Buffy said. “That was what I wanted to tell you.” She gently touched the bandage on one wrist. “You saved me. I… I think I knew you would. I think… I didn’t really  _ want _ to die.” She swallowed. “You’re everything I hate. You’re everything I’m supposed to be against. And I had this thing with Angel, and everything went wrong, and he was supposed to be  _ good _ . How could anything with a vampire be anything but a disaster?”

   Spike didn’t say anything. He didn’t quite dare. He knew Angel was bad even at being good, but he knew there was too much baggage there to unpack.

   “But the thing is, I realized... when I hit rock bottom... and I didn’t want to feel like this anymore...,” she traced up her arm, following the mark of the already healing scar. “What I did was basically call you. I think that’s what I was doing. It’s always got to be blood, you said once.” She swallowed. “It’s in the blood.” She turned to him, and Spike didn’t move, and didn’t move, even as she leaned toward him, because he couldn’t believe it. His entire body was reaching for her, pleading for her, and okay, maybe he’d moved forward a little, but she closed the final gap.

   She kissed him.

   It was everything he remembered, everything he dreamed, the taste of her, the warmth of her, the sweetness in her lips, the way they fit just right against his. The smoothness of her clever tongue, and god, she was just sucking him in.

   His arms went to her shoulders, and he clutched her, using all his power not to fling her to the ground and bend over her, feel her sweet body beneath him. No, no, this was enough, this was a miracle. Her hands were strong on his neck, on his waist, and oh, god, yes, Buffy. This was  _ Buffy _ . His body was chiming and echoing with her touch like a brass bell.

   She pulled away. “This can’t work.”

   “No.”

   She kissed him again, more powerfully this time, pulling his head down to hers until it almost seemed she was about to crawl into his lap. Her naughty little teeth nipped at his lips, and his tongue, and he growled low as she awakened the demon in him.

   “This is wrong.”

   “Completely.”

   She put her arms around him then, and he could feel her whole body against his, and her mouth was so open and so hungry, he gripped at her, letting his body hum with lust as the love that always burned in him roared to demanding life.

   This time when Buffy pulled away, she hovered, breathing into his mouth. “Don’t leave me.”

   He opened his eyes at that desperate whisper, and found that Buffy was nearly in tears. “Oh, pet.” He kissed her again, kissed her tenderly, little comforting pecks on her lips, her cheeks, each of her tear-bright eyes. Buffy sighed and then leaned forward to hug him.

   For long, peaceful moments he held her, her warmth against him, his strength against hers, her life and her heartbeat filling him, filling him, making him tremble with adoration. Because really, there was still the minion in any damn vampire, if they found someone worthy of it. He’d have been Buffy’s willing slave if he thought she’d bestow on him the grace of her affection.

   “I’m fucked up,” she whispered against his neck.

   “So what else is new?”

   “No promises.”

   “None,” Spike said, and he kissed her throat beneath her ear.

   “We’re still mortal enemies.”

   “That’s what makes it fun.”

   He got a laugh for that one, and she pulled away. “Okay. Okay. I... okay.” She backed away across the garden, still blushing. “Don’t... tell anyone.”

   “Not a word, love.”

   He meant it. She really could just order him around, dammit. Did she  _ want _ him on his knees? ‘Cause he could totally do that. He was tempted to just fall off the edge of the fountain and show her. And then of course on his knees he’d be right at the correct height to do naughty, naughty things if she’d just stand still long enough....

   But she was heading back inside, almost running, and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t find her in the common room, and the niblet was out of blood, and the butcher closed at seven...

   Bloody hell, the niblet. He hadn’t had a chance to say....

   Didn’t matter, Spike decided. Worth it. One kiss. (Three kisses!) Worth anything. Almost anything. Worth scrapping his damned agenda anyway, whatever it was today. So he headed to the butchers and bought up some blood and went back to the niblet, his errand only half done, but Buffy had kissed him, she’d kissed him,  _ she’d kissed him _ !

   Should he tell Dawn? He didn’t know how she felt about the possibility of things actually  _ happening _ between him and Buffy. She might have a different opinion now than she would have when she’d been alive, and he wasn’t sure what her opinion would have been then, anyway.

   But his musings on that were caught up short when he saw that the outer door to his crypt lay open, and that was certainly not how he’d left it. He quickened his pace, and heard a scuffle from within. Spike ran, burst through the inner door, and there was Dawn, all fangy, bending to sink said fangs into Tara’s neck.

   “Dawn!”

   She didn’t hear.

   “Dawn,  _ stop that _ !”

   She wasn’t listening. She struggled further onto the witch, and Spike smelled blood. He dropped the butcher’s bag – at least one plastic bag broke, the smell of goat blood adding to the scent of fear and human in the crypt – and dove into the fray, ripping Dawn bodily off Tara. God, did the witch have that vamp spell on? Bloody hell, that was dizzy making. And Dawn was fighting through that? That took guts!

_ Not the time for proud papa right now.  _ He ripped the fledgling off the witch and flung her across the crypt. She hit the wall, her head lolling.

   Tara’s blood was up, not surprising, so Spike kicked at the stake in her hand, not at Tara herself, which didn’t set off the chip, thank god. The stake flew and clattered on the ground. “I got this, back off!”

   “Back  _ off _ ?”

   Spike didn’t have time for Tara yet, now that she couldn’t take it into her head to make him dusty. He had a newborn to quell. She’d already struggled to her feet. “Dawn,” Spike started, growling just a bit.

   “I just wanted to kill her,” Dawn whined.

   Spike lunged at her, vamped out, angry, and hit the wall beside her head. “Dawn!”

   She gasped, terrified, and cowered a bit. “I’m sorry,” she squeaked. “I’m sorry, did I do wrong?”

   “For one, yeah, your technique was bollocks. Two, I told you no!”

   “I... I didn’t think... this counted... since... I mean... walked right in!” Dawn was close to tears. “I thought... you’d be proud if I took her out myself, I...”

   “We don’t kill friends,” Spike growled between his fangs. “Now, stand up and apologize to Tara.”

   “But isn’t she just a human?”

   “ _ DAWN _ .”

   Dawn cringed, and she did break into tears. She’d gone back to her resting face, which was, fortunately, human. “I’m sorry.”

   “To  _ her _ , niblet.”

   Tara’s jaw dropped as Spike stepped aside, and a very, very chagrined and tearful vampire Dawn crept up to her, shoulders hunched, trembling a little, rightfully afraid of a very extreme punishment. “I’m sorry, Tara,” she said, sounding more frightened than remorseful.

   Spike kicked her ankle. “And you won’t do it again.”

   “I won’t do it again,” Dawn whimpered.

   “Now you go to your coffin and think about this. You hear me?  _ Think _ about it. What you’ve done, why I said no, and that you defied me, Dawn.”

   At the word _ defied _ she actually gasped, as if that very concept was more horrible than the possibility of Tara’s death. Well, right now, it was, to her. Spike sighed. Well, at least he’d gotten here in time. He liked Tara, it would be a shame if she’d been killed. And worse if Dawn had done it. Dawn was sobbing openly now.

   “Go!” Spike pointed.

   Dawn went, still cringing, and headed down the ladder to the lower level. Spike waited until he was sure she’d crawled into her coffin and was sobbing into her blue star bear before he shunted the concrete slab back over the entrance and turned back to Tara.

   “Sorry about that, pet,” he said, suddenly feeling exhausted. “I wasn’t expecting any visitors.”

   Spike jumped forward and caught Tara as the shock sent her wobbly.

 


	13. Friend

 

 

   “I’m fine, I just needed to sit down,” Tara said, as Spike pushed another cup of water into her hand. She drank it anyway. It had all been a bit of a shock. Dawn was ali…. No, not alive. Not exactly dead either, but definitely not alive. Undead. Dawn was a vampire. It was only a matter of time before it had happened to one of them, really, but Dawn…. She had been so young and never even part of the slaying. “Okay, let me get this straight. You didn’t kill her, but you did  _ sire _ her?”

  “Sort of,” Spike said again. He’d been saying “Sort of” a lot, as if it were all a confusing mess for him, too. “I mean, she was the worst kind of newborn, the kind we’re always staking in the cemeteries, just  _ rarr _ shit. It was either dust her or take her on.”

  “Yeah, you said that,” Tara said.  He was pacing back and forth, agitated from having to explain himself. Well, tough cookies. Tara had just confronted her girlfriend about her growing addiction and had then been attacked by someone she had thought was dead. She wasn’t going to just stand down when dealing with a vampire who couldn’t even hurt her. “What I don’t understand is, what you thought making her more powerful was actually going to...  _ do _ . Apart from make it easier for her to kill.”

  “It’ll help her think straight! Trust me, the stronger you are, the more clever you are, that’s just the way of it. You’ve enough strength to power the blood-lust easy, then there’s enough to focus on other things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like life! Love! Dog-racing, I don’t care. The only way to get her to focus on more than the evil was just to make her stronger, all right?”

  Tara thought she could sort of understand. He’d seen a wild thing in Dawn’s body and had decided to try to tame it instead of destroying it. He was Spike; he wouldn’t have wanted her weak. One of the many things Tara had learned about him over the summer was that he liked women to be strong. “But what if she starts to kill people, Spike? She doesn’t have a chip or anything. What’s to stop her?”

  “Me.”

  Tara gestured to her neck. “Good job!” 

  Spike glanced at her neck, professionally. The dismissal in his face told Tara she’d be fine more eloquently than a diagnosis from any doctor could have. She’d been injured often enough over the summer to know he really would care if it was bad. “That doesn’t count. I hadn’t told her not to, yet.”

  “You hadn’t told her not to kill?”

  “I’d told her not to hunt, you came into the crypt. Delivery.”

  “This is not reassuring me, Spike!”

  “Look, she’s young and hot for the kill. I was gonna wait a bit before I explained it to her, told her why not.”

  “You’re evil! Do you even  _ care _ why not?” 

  “Not like you do,” he admitted. “We’re different, but there’s other reasons not to kill besides thinking it’s piously wrong. It would get the slayer all up her face, first off, and she needs to think clear. There’s a logic to this all--”

  “You’re going to logic the need to kill out of a newborn  _ vampire _ ?”

  “No! I’m just gonna tell her not to, right? I’m the dominant one here. I sired her, it makes her listen to me.”

  “How does that make her killing and her evil any better?”

  “It doesn’t, it just....” Spike shook his head and pulled Tara further from the entrance to the lower level, even though he’d put the concrete slab over to keep their voices out. “Look. I can keep her from killing, okay? I know Buffy wouldn’t want her to do that. Hell,  _ Dawn _ wouldn’t want her to do that.”

  “But Dawn _ does _ want to do that. I know. She bit my neck!”

  “ _ She _ does, but Dawn wouldn’t.” Spike made a tortured sound and stared up at the ceiling for a long moment. Maybe he wasn’t deluding himself about all of this, looking through rose-colored glasses. This was tearing him up. “Look. I know it’s not Dawn. After what happened to Buffy, after where she went, I know that soul thing matters. I know it. But this is what Dawn left behind, and I can’t just throw that away. She can be something. Maybe she can help you all, maybe one day she can fight with Buffy and help with the slaying and all that rot, when her newborn instincts are cooler and she’s, you know...”

  Tara suddenly got it. “You’re hoping she’ll be like you.”

  And a smile graced his face like Tara had never seen before. Something soft and loving and possessive, a proud parent. “She’s already like me,” he said. “She’s impatient and clever and she’s always asking questions, what can we do, what can’t we do, what is it to be a vampire. I don’t even know the answers to all her questions. She’s a cat, that curiosity might kill, but if I keep her alive long enough... god, pet, she could be glorious. Just look at her, did you see her? She’s less than a week old, she’s already trying to take out a witch!”

  “Yeah, I noticed,” Tara said.

  Spike looked chagrined. “Not what I meant, love.”

  “No. It’s exactly what you meant.” Tara sighed. She could see it was already too late. It was clear Spike loved her. And she supposed it was noble, in its way, an adoptive parent who had chosen to replace a bad natural parent, trying to correct what had been done wrong. But this was dangerous. “Look, Spike... you’ve done a lot of good. And I know you love Dawn. But that thing isn’t Dawn, it’s a demon.”

  “With Dawn’s echo in her,” Spike said. “Listen.” He took Tara’s arm and sat down with her on the step of his crypt. “A long time ago... a long, long time ago, there was a man.” He was looking out, his eyes very distant. “A man named William, who was young and... silly and helpless. And he was killed in an alleyway by a vampire.” He looked over at Tara. “And I know he’s dead. I know he’s not me. But I came from him, and there’s something in that, there’s an echo in that. He was a good man. And now I’m a  _ damn _ good demon. And part of that is because I remember the man I was. I loved to love, I… knew how to learn, I broke the sodding rules. They were little rules then, like don’t sit before the hostess and don’t talk to the help, but that’s who I was. Now I’m a rebel from my whole kind, and don’t tell me that’s not ‘cause I started a bloody outcast. She remembers Dawn, she has  _ all _ of it, in there, hiding behind all the things that made her want to kill you just now. If I can just keep her together long enough, be her sire, be dominant enough for her until she realizes what else is important in life.... I just want to give her that chance.”

  “And when she’s not a newborn anymore?” Tara asked. “When she’s strong and your influence as her sire fades? What’s gonna happen then?”

  Spike leaned back. “Then she’ll be what she’ll be.”

  “Is that going to be a killer, though?”

  “I don’t know,” Spike said. “I really don’t know, I’m gonna try for not. Not of people, anyway, Buffy wouldn’t like that.”

  “It still matters what Buffy would think?”

  “It always matters what Buffy would think.” Spike looked at Tara as if she’d just asked whether rain fell up or down. “That’s the only thing that ever matters.”

  Goddess, but he loved Buffy. Tara was often startled when he let show how much he loved Buffy. He’d twisted his entire nature to become a hero, and now was trying to twist Dawn’s, in the hopes that she’d do the same.

  Tara considered him. He’d helped to save her when her father had come to take her away, proven to everyone, including Tara herself, that she wasn’t a demon, and wasn’t going to become evil. She remembered how kind he had been when she was crazy. Those memories were foggy and confused, but she did have them. She remembered him being patient and understanding, even when she’d burned him with sunlight or called him a dog. 

  Back last year, when the Buffybot had made everyone think Buffy was sleeping with Spike, Tara had declared her crazy for it. Now, after spending the summer with him, she wasn’t sure she would think the same way. There was a good man buried in that demon, and Tara had seen it often enough that she believed it.

  If he was right... then something, an echo of her little Dawnie, might be hidden in that demoness in the crypt. And Dawn was sweet and fun and Tara loved her, and if there was something of her left behind... a child of Dawn’s, almost. A demonic child of Dawn, raised by Spike, who really had been invaluable this last year. A true hero.

  And really, in the end… this was something between vampires. If it hadn’t been  _ her _ , if she hadn’t been  _ Dawn _ , this wouldn’t have had anything to do with any them. He was a vampire, who had adopted another vampire, and by the time Spike had found Dawn and made this decision there was nothing human left about any of it. Was it any of her business if Spike wanted to… procreate? Was that the right word? Anyway, so long as he wasn’t killing anyone to do it, what right did she have to get between vampire families?

  “Okay,” she said quietly.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.” There was still an elephant in the room. The little matter of her natural prey. “But Spike, what if she  _ does  _ starts killing? We can’t let that go on.”

   “If she breaks training that bad, I’ll stake her myself,” he said. His face was grim and hard as stone, and Tara found it even more disturbing than when it was all bumpy. He meant that.

_ It must be so hard being a vampire, _ she realized. Violence was laced into everything, even parenthood. Even love. Maybe they found it normal... but the good man he had been must have some echo of horror at the idea of killing his own daughter because she disobeyed.

  Or maybe not. Her own father hadn’t seemed to mind killing his daughter’s spirit, for the sake of a clean house and obedience. She’d been told most fathers weren’t like that, but all she really knew was her own experience. Just as Spike knew his own. He was a vampire who didn’t kill. Granted, that was because of the chip, but still….

  She sighed. “When are you going to tell Buffy? You can’t hide this forever.”

  “I didn’t mean to hide it at all, it was just... Buffy’s finally grieving, pet. Not just Dawn, but her mum and... and some other stuff. If I let her know about this, it’ll just get in the way.” He glanced toward the stone covering the lower level. “Soon. I’ll tell her soon. When I’m sure she’s ready, and Dawn’s ready, and...” He looked at Tara. “You gonna tell on me?”

  “I don’t think... yet,” she said. He had a point about Buffy and the grieving process. “But you have to. Soon.”

  “I will.” He frowned at Tara. “Look, I... don’t have any access to this stuff, do you think you could get Dawn’s school work for me? I’d take the whole year if I could get it. At least a syllabus, books, maybe her math book or something? She’s just a kid. I can teach her how to be a vampire, but she should still learn some of that other nonsense. And... maybe some of her stuff? Clothes and things? I stole a couple stuffed animals when she first came, but... the more Dawn stuff from her life that she’s got, the better.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” She stood up. “This is really risky stuff, Spike. I’m trusting you to... be the kind of vampire I know you are.”

  “I can keep the niblet in line, pet, I know I can. But I could use a little help. She won’t try to jump you again, I swear.”

  “No offense, but I’m not risking it unless you’re there, Spike. Not for a while. I can come by tomorrow with some stuff. You’ll be here?”

  “It’s a date,” Spike said.

  “It’s probably a mistake,” Tara said as she left.

  It probably was, she mused as she walked through the dark cemetery, crystal and stake in hand. This thing Spike was doing. A big mistake. But it was one she was apparently willing to make right along with him.  

  For Dawn.

 

***

 

  " She gone?” Dawn asked.

Tara had been gone for a while, and Dawn knew it, and Spike knew she knew it, but it was at least a way to ask that wasn’t basically asking if she could come out of her room now, please.

Spike didn’t look at her. He was sitting on the floor like some glorious panther-god, his leg up, a beer on his knee, leaning against his chair and watching television. “Yeah.”

   “I… didn’t mean to defy you.”

   “I know it.” 

   He still wasn’t looking at her. Dawn pushed the slab completely out of the way and crept out into the upper level. She knelt by the hole and watched him for a long moment. What she wanted to do was kneel before him and beg forgiveness for angering him, which was really stupid. Spike wasn’t the type for liking that  _ kneeling before you _ kinda shit.

   So she did the other thing she wanted to do, even though she thought he might hit her. But she felt miserable. Really, really miserable, and she knew this would help, if he’d just let her. She walked up to him a bit, and then she did get down on her knees, but instead of bowing and scraping she crawled up to him, and snuggled up to him, and put her head on his chest. He sighed and looked up at the ceiling, but after a moment Dawn realized he  _ wasn’t _ going to push her away, so she put her arm around his waist and relaxed against his strength, and he was hers, he was her sire, and how the hell was she supposed to please him?

   “Do you just not want me to kill at all?”

   Spike sighed, and set his beer down so he could put his arm around her shoulders. He hadn’t done that since the turning, though they’d snuggled a lot when she was still human. She missed that. “I dunno, niblet,” he said wearily. “It’s complicated. But god, not here. Not  _ now _ . There’s the slayer, and her witch friends, and they sure as hell don’t want you to kill, and I can’t protect you here. You’re still so damn young. You just gotta not get anyone’s back up, it’s too risky!”

   “You want to protect me?”

   Spike looked down at her. “‘Course I do, niblet. What the hell do you think this is all about?”

   “I thought... I dunno. That you didn’t really like me or something.”

   Spike gazed at her. “Dawn, pet, I love you. You’re the last little bit of...” He stopped, and ran his fingers through her hair. “All right, I’m gonna tell you something. I’ve never made anyone like you before. I’ve never known anyone I wanted to keep, anyone I thought worthy of my blood. I’ve made minions, ‘cause you need them sometimes, if you’ve got a scheme or sommat, but they weren’t like you. They were just... tools I spat out, and I used like tools, to throw away when I didn’t need ‘em anymore. You... you’re like my daughter, you’re... family....”

   He sighed and looked away, and she felt a tremble somewhere deep inside him, like an echo of a heartbeat, and it made her tense up inside. She loved him so, so much. She buried her face in his chest and sort of climbed up him and then she was hugging him, and he let her, so she kissed his cheek, and he let her, so she went for his lips, and he turned his face away, and damn it, his face got all hard again, so she went back down and just held him. That tremble was still there. She’d hoped to kiss it away, maybe. Or something. She wished she was sure what he wanted of her.

  “You’ve really never tried to make family before? Never, ever?”

  Spike stood up suddenly and went to the fridge. “You want some goat? The butcher had goat blood. It’s paler than pig, but it’s a little lighter, and... well, it’s different.”

  Dawn was left alone on the floor, feeling weird. She’d just wanted him to say he loved her again, reassure her. Because that... she’d been feeling really lonely. And that had been the best thing that had happened since she was turned. Sometimes she really, really wished he’d fuck her, because then she’d be  _ sure _ she had him. Justin had wanted to fuck her, and  _ he’d _ been her sire.

   “Yeah, okay,” she said. “So... you don’t want me to kill people here?”

   “No, I kinda don’t.”

   “Not ever?”

   Spike rolled his eyes. “I can’t make that choice for you. You’ve a whole unlife ahead of you. While you’re under my roof, don’t bloody kill humans, okay? Not unless they’re trying to kill you first.”

  Dawn grinned at him. “Did you just say ‘while you’re under my roof?’”

  “Shut up.”

  “Come on, Daddy, they’re just silly humans!”

  “Dawn!” Spike growled.

  She dropped that tease. “I’ve just never even  _ tasted _ human.”

  Spike regarded her. “We’ll see what we can do about that,” he said. “But right now you follow my lead, you hear me?”

  “Okay.”

  “And we don’t kill  _ friends _ .”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’re useful. And god, why Tara? I mean, sheesh, if you gotta kill one of the Scoobies, take out Xander.”

“You want me to kill Xander?”

Spike rolled his eyes. “No. I don’t, actually. Not even him, dammit. Look. Anyone who you could count as a friend, or an ally… it would be a waste to just gobble them up for a snack. Look, say you’d gotten hurt. Tara could help get you out of a jam, but not if she thinks you’re gonna kill her next time you get peckish.”

  “But... what if I was really hungry, and she was there?”

  “Then she wouldn’t be there tomorrow, would she?”

  Dawn frowned. “Oh, yeah.” That thought genuinely hadn’t occurred to her.

  Spike rolled his eyes. “Here. Drink up, you’re obviously hungry.”

  Dawn grabbed the jar of goat blood, which tasted watery compared to pig, but fresher, probably because of the whole herbivore thing. It was like chamomile tea compared to hot cocoa. Not a replacement, but nice for variety. “Not bad.” She looked up at Spike. “Is human blood really as good as I feel like it would be?”

   “It can be,” Spike said. “It’s more subtle, for one, more variety between one and another. You can taste a whole life in a human. Like some connoisseurs of wine can taste the difference between one field and another, and one year and another? Humans are like that.”

“And it’s also like wine because it gets you drunk.”

“Not quite what I’d call it. It’s closer to a high than a drunk, but that’s not quite it, either. You just feel more demonic on it. And evil, and the evil’s a rush.” He nodded. “That’s it, it’s a rush.”

“Do you miss the rush?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “But you can get the same thing from killing demons, or a really good fight, or… a couple of absolutely stunning kisses. And those tend not to make your head as blurry.”

Dawn regarded him. “Are you ever gonna kill humans again?”

“Probably not, with this chip shoved up my brain,” he said lightly. “Too bloody vulnerable.” He shrugged. “I found other things. Beer, poker, some good music.” He chuckled. “Though if you’d asked me five years ago, I’da said just stake me now. That’s the thing, pet. When you’re on the blood, the only thing that matters is the blood. Everything else ends up taking a back seat. Once that’s off the list, other things get more important.”

“Like what?”

Spike looked a bit at a loss. “Well, like you,” he finally said. “And Buffy and all.”

“Like Tara,” Dawn said, finally starting to understand.

“Yeah.”

   “So we don’t take friends like Tara just for blood, ‘cause without blood they get more important?”

   Spike closed his eyes. “Dawn. She’s  _ Tara _ . You...!” He turned away. “Just... never mind. I’m going to the liquor store.” He glared at her as he picked up his coat. “Don’t leave the crypt, and  _ don’t kill anyone! _ ”

   He’d done that strong  _ Señor _ thing again, and Dawn found herself nodding enthusiastically, even though some part of her wanted to argue. She was made to kill, wasn’t she? But... he was Spike. “Yes, sir.”

   Spike winced, and whirled away, and Dawn stared after him, feeling like she’d done something wrong again.

   How the hell was she supposed to make him happy?

 

***

  Spike ran and ran and ran through the cemetery, ostensibly heading for the liquor store, but mostly just feeling his body move, move, god, just get away from that... that thing.... She was Dawn, but she wasn’t Dawn, and everything she did that wasn’t Dawn just drove it deeper and deeper into him that Dawn was dead, she was dead, and he hadn’t protected her, he’d buggered it all up and Dawn had died...

  And the only thing left wanted to kill Tara, and follow orders, and – and – touch him... ugh! The memory of Buffy’s kisses (three. Three Buffy kisses!) was tainted, and he couldn’t feel them now even when he thought about them. Dawn had spoiled them. For now, at least. 

  It wasn’t fair. He  _ did _ want to hold Dawn. He wanted to put his arms around her and watch cartoons, and kiss her cheek, and tell her how proud of her he was, but when she’d hug him too close like that he just wanted her  _ dust. _

  An ugly, shivery feeling burned inside him, a leviathan stirring in the depths of his mind, trying to surface, trying to….  _ Family. Family. He’d never made family…  _

  God, yes, there was the liquor store. He needed a bloody drink!

 


	14. Support

 

 

“The psychiatrist thinks you’re ready?” Tara asked. 

Buffy had heard a lot about Tara in the last few days. Mostly that she was supposedly being super unfair and demanding things that didn’t make any sense. Magic should be used, Willow had insisted (with lots and big, sweeping hand gestures), otherwise what was the point of it even existing? It was a tool, like a hammer, but Tara apparently felt they should be using rocks instead. It had gone on and on like that, because, apparently, a woman in the psych ward who had just lost the last of her immediate family was the one to whine to about fairness. Buffy had just sat there and listened, the complaints a welcome distraction from her own, way bigger, relationship problem, which took the form of a white-haired vampire with a really stupid, and stupidly sexually evocative, name.

    Spike. She kept finding herself whispering it in the darkness, burying calls for him into her pillow, biting her lip as she thought about him kissing her, touching her, and she knew she shouldn’t want him, but she  _ did _ dammit! 

    He’d come to see her several times, more often than any of the others. He kept saying they needed to talk. She was terrified that he wanted to talk about those kisses in the garden. Demand what they meant, what she wanted, what they were going to do. And she couldn’t, she couldn’t bear it. 

    So she would hide in the common room where there were too many other people around to talk about anything personal. And he’d have to talk about “work” (read: slayage, and even that in couched terms) or socks or the weather. Or she’d sit in art therapy with the others and paint, and he’d feel he had to be silent. He was respectful enough not to keep chattering if she ignored him and focused on her painting, unlike Xander, or Willow, who would just keep talking. He would sit beside her, in peaceful silence, and she’d concentrate, and add things to the paper, and sometimes he’d move a little like he was about to speak, and she wouldn’t encourage him, so he’d stay quiet. (And then she’d reach out her hand, and find his right there on his knee, and their fingers would touch, and she’d hear him gasp, and she would  _ not _ look at him, she would not, she would  _ not _ .)

    And sometimes he would come by, and she’d be in the garden or alone in her room, and she’d  _ know  _ he wanted to talk to her about those kisses, and she’d  _ know _ she couldn’t handle it, so she would shut him up… by kissing him. Because somehow that made sense. 

    Tara. She made sense. She was probably the most sensible of the Scoobies, and for some strange reason she seemed to think she wasn’t even a member of the team. 

This was the first time Tara had come herself since Buffy had been in the psych ward. She’d come once while Buffy was still in recovery, but they hadn’t had time to talk then. Tara said she’d have come before, but she didn’t really want to run into Willow, because the last thing Buffy needed was ‘drama’. She knew Willow was at class this morning, and even though Buffy was really Willow’s friend and not hers – “God, Tara! You’re my friend!” – Tara had wanted to make sure everything was really okay.

“Yeah, the head shrinky person – why do they call them shrinks, anyway? Did the shrunken head maker people do therapy, too?” Buffy shook her head at her own ridiculous question. “Anyway, she seems to think I’ll be okay,” Buffy said. “But she says I should make sure not to isolate myself. That I should try and find some kind of psychologist or outreach program or something, I don’t know. To help with all the grief.”

“Well, between your mom and Dawn, I’m sure there’s a lot,” Tara said. “I-I started g-going to a grief therapy group. Um, at the library on Tuesdays. They-they have room for more members, if you wanted to come.” 

“Why did you start therapy?”

“Grief therapy,” Tara clarified. “I-I was sad and-and confused over Dawn, too. And with the break-up… I… I needed somewhere I could talk about it. It’s not just for death, it’s for other things people are sad about. One guy’s there because of a divorce, and another… um. Had a brother that he says joined a gang and started taking PCP.” 

Buffy burst into slightly hysterical laughter. “Yeah. That happens a lot in Sunnydale!” The words were hopeless, and she knew it.

Tara didn’t seem to think it was funny. Well, neither did Buffy except in a macabre and helpless way. Tara looked up shyly. “Has-has Spike been to see you?” 

“Yeah. I… um… yeah. Spike… Spike comes by a lot.”

Sort of because she’d made him… come. At least a few times. She couldn’t help it, she had to see what it was that she’d felt against herself as she kissed him, had to at least know what it was that he had in store for… um. Well. Not her, because, well, she wasn’t going to take this  _ that _ far (she kept telling herself) this was just a little experimentation (she kept telling herself) which had nothing to do with what she really wanted in her… miserable, worthless, what-was-the-point-of-it-all life. 

So she’d crept him behind the door in her (cell) room when her roommate was out doing something else, and kissed him and unzipped him – god that had sounded so loud, and so erotic – and took him into her hand, and she wasn’t disappointed. He was hard and long and smooth, uncut (unlike Riley) which let her slide up and down him, making him gasp and shudder, holding back moans she knew he wanted to make, staring into her eyes in shock and wonder. Even the expression on his face was beautiful, and she stared back. She didn’t know what she looked like – hard, probably, hard as the cock in her hand. She just kept going, relentless, unwilling to let him go until he was done. And then he was, undone, cool and sticky in her hand. She almost moaned herself at the thought of it, and she kissed him, kissed him hard, as she assaulted him with it again, armed with his own juices. 

His cock didn’t feel like Riley’s, and his mouth didn’t feel like Riley, or Angel for that matter. (Her one nervous tryst with Angel she hadn’t had enough experience to try and explore his cock, and in fact barely remembered even seeing it. Though she suspected it was uncut like Spike’s….) Angel and Riley had both kissed her like she was something delicate. Spike kissed her like he was pouring himself into her, trying to curl up inside her emptiness, all warm and cozy, and fill it with his… what? Darkness? She wasn’t sure that was what he wanted, either…

And with his darkness again in her hand she’d kissed him one more time and fled to the common room bathroom, where she hadn’t come out again until she was sure he was gone. 

“It’s just… do you know what he’s going through?” Tara asked. “He made that vow to protect Dawn, and…”

“He’s a vampire,” Buffy said. “He can’t care.”

Tara looked down again. “I guess. I just… I think you two need to talk.”

“Since when are you all pro-Spike?” Tara didn’t say anything, and Buffy didn’t have time. “Look, I have to go to group,” Buffy said. “Thanks for coming by. I’ll… I’ll look into that thing at the library. Tuesday?”

“At seven. All you’d have to do is show up. If you’re okay with me hearing your feelings.” 

“I mostly just listen in group,” Buffy confessed. “But… even the listening… kind of helps. Thanks.” 

    Buffy headed to the common room and sat down in the circle for group, but unfortunately the common room had the piano. Which was distracting. It wasn’t that Buffy had any particular fondness for the piano itself, which was out-of-tune and mostly used by residents playing Chopsticks loud enough to wake the dead, with the occasional bad rendition of Heart-and-Soul. 

    But there was that one time three days ago when Spike had come to see her, and she’d been possessed by some really perverted imp which somehow thought the common room was a wonderful place to feel Spike’s body against her again, and she’d dragged him down behind it, with other people all around them (though not paying attention, she was sure, not at all paying attention!) and straddled him and felt him all over, particularly straining against his jeans up between her legs, and she couldn’t help but thrust herself against him as she tasted his cool lips again and again and again. And when Spike was sure what she was doing he’d moved his hand, and held it against her, moving it just… so…. 

    She couldn’t concentrate even on his kisses as he did that, and she sat back and stared at him, the complete concentration as he was  _ determined _ to make her come. Riley had never been so determined. She could see Spike’s lips and tongue as he stared into her eyes, moving as if he longed to have something other than his fingers between her legs. They didn’t dare speak, but she could almost hear his voice in his eyes,  _ That’s it. Feel it, I can do this for you. I can make you feel good, I can make you feel something good in this hell you’ve been reborn into. _

    Because he was a demon. And he knew the landscape of hell. 

    She’d had to freeze as she came, or her scream would have woken the dead, let alone alerted everyone in the common room, and the psych ward, and the hospital, and the northern fucking hemisphere as to the inappropriate things she was doing with a god damned vampire behind the piano.

    Stupid piano.

Buffy shook her head as she tried to focus on the group again. “…guys were right. I called her up, and she wanted to talk to me.”

    That was Ronnie, whose emotionally abusive girlfriend had slowly cut him off from his friends and family. The therapy group had finally convinced him to call his mom. Good for him. Buffy wished she could talk to her mom, too. She had a bunch of things she needed to talk to a sensible, open minded adult about.

   She’d learned a lot about the people here in group. Well, not a lot, a lot. She didn’t know any of their favorite colors or foods or anything like that, but she knew some of what they’d been through in their lives. The mentally ill suffered more-frequent-than-average cases of abuse, maltreatment, addiction, and neglect than the population at large, and they were so used to the stigma of their mental health issues that the additional stigma of the abuse and the neglect and the poor-life-choices just… wasn’t their highest priority. They were so messed up that being honest about the normal messes was just accepted. 

   Buffy found it… interesting. Refreshing. Enlightening. The circumstances may have been different, but… these people felt the same things she did. Lost and confused, struggling to find their place. She didn’t feel like a freak around them. 

   She hadn’t realized how often she felt like a freak around normal people.  

   Once the congratulations for Ronnie died down, he smiled. “Yeah, thanks. See… the thing is… Um. The thing is, I did want to thank you. I mean, I really thought Julia wanted what was best for me, and with the depression, I thought, well, she’s gotta be right. I mean, she was older than me, and smarter, and I really just felt… like I didn’t deserve her. And when she said it was all my fault she started using again, because I wasn’t grateful enough to her…”

“It’s  _ never _ anyone else’s fault if you start using,” said John-the-biker – or at least Buffy assumed he was a biker, based on all his Harley Davidson shirts. “Users use because they’re addicts, not because someone doesn’t love them enough.” 

Ronnie looked down. “Yeah. I get that. I still feel guilty for it, though.” 

Buffy rubbed her arm, hard. It hurt, but Ronnie’s story always cut just a little close to home for her, and the physical pain helped take her mind off of it. Actually… most of the stories of the people in group seemed like little Buffy-heart-seeking missiles.

For instance, Katie, who sat across from her right now, her black dyed hair over her eyes. “I totally get that,” Katie said. “I mean… I still feel like it’s my fault Michael did what he did. Like… it was all my fault he targeted me, because I wore the handcuffs and I carried the flogger on my backpack and everything? Like, if I hadn’t been open about being into kink, he wouldn’t have… um. Well, you know.” 

Everyone nodded sympathetically.

“Michael” was, of all people, Katie’s TA in college. He had claimed that because she was a ‘kinkster’ as she called herself, she’d surely be into it with anybody, and told her that if she wanted a good grade in her college class, she’d have to put out. The stress had made her go back to self-mutilation – something Katie claimed she hadn’t done since high school – and she cut too deeply and ended up catching an artery or something. She hadn’t been able to stop the bleeding, and when that started to scare her, she ran to the hospital, where they told her she was right; losing that much blood had been dangerous. After talking to the shrink, she had ended up in here.

What struck Buffy about Katie was that when she told that story no one chastised her for the handcuffs or the flogger or the ‘kink’ as she called it. Or even the self-cutting, though they said it was dangerous (and she said she knew that, which was why she’d stopped years before. It was just the stress.) She was only told that her TA was a bastard who was abusing his authority over a student, and someone called the college to have him removed. 

Buffy… hadn’t been able to say she’d been asked out by, and dated, her own TA for almost a year. Or that he then blamed her for his subsequent addiction. It hadn’t seemed quite so icky when it had been her.

Of course, everything looked icky when you saw it through that kind of lens. Xander had been sure Riley was good for her. So had Willow. Giles had deferred judgement, but Spike… Spike had not. Spike had been incredibly vocal about Captain Cardboard, Commander Whitebread, Admiral Flimsydick, or whatever the insult of the week was. 

Of course, Spike was always vocal. She’d been so desperate to shut him up these last weeks, she hadn’t been letting him talk. The only time she hadn’t, he hadn’t taken her up on the chance, because that was the time he’d come and found her sobbing into her pillow over Dawn. 

    She’d been doing that on and off, crying. Mostly late at night. Spike had immediately slid into the bed beside her and brushed her hair off her face and murmured endearments at her and let her bury her head in his strong chest and just pretend he was the only thing in the world. And it had worked. The tears kept coming, but he smelled right, and he felt right, and she wanted to keep feeling this. Spike kept stroking her head and rubbing her shoulders and when the CNA came in and told him that intimate contact was inappropriate in this setting, he told the bitch to sod off, using the precise words, “Sod off, bitch.” And after he’d been reported, the RN on duty had peered in, decided that fully-clothed-platonic-snuggles-of-weeping-patients-whose-sisters-had-been-murdered didn’t actually count as “inappropriate intimate contact” even  _ if _ they were snuggled in bed, and left them to it. 

And Spike had kissed Buffy’s forehead, and she had laughed through her tears, and then went back to pure crying, and he just held her until she fell asleep. 

Which… annoyingly lingered in her head even more than the hand-jobs and the kisses and the heavy petting. 

She took a deep breath. She was going to have to talk about this to  _ someone _ and her friends were out, and Giles was out, and Spike was sure as hell out, and really… she’d probably never see these people again. When the group leader asked if anyone else wanted to share today, Buffy raised her hand in a slight wave.

   “I… uh, I’d like to say something,” she said, scratching absently at the bandages around her wrists. She didn’t actually need them – slayer healing being much of the yayness – but she was trying to pretend she was normal. (And the Oscar goes to…!) The group leader gave her an encouraging smile and gestured for her to go on. “Um. I’m leaving here. Tomorrow morning.”

   There were more congratulations, this time for her. That was the main goal, of course, even for the voluntaries. Getting out. Some of the involuntaries even lied about the effects of the medication, pretending it was helping even when it wasn’t. Buffy had paid careful attention to that. After the horrible betrayal of the Cruciamentum, there was no way she was ever letting herself be drugged again. Being that vulnerable and powerless…. No. Just, no. 

   And of course muscle-relaxants and mood-altering drugs had been  _ exactly _ what Giles had shot her up with for a lovely eighteenth birthday present – a gift that was only topped by the joyful birthday present Angel had bestowed the year before. So she’d been palming the pills, and faked a few side-effects, because she was afraid they wouldn’t let her stay if she wasn’t following their medical regime. 

  “I’ve gotten a lot, here, just from listening to all of you. Now, I… um, I kinda wanted to run something by you. There’s this....” She paused and took a deep breath, fighting the urge to just say thanks and shut down again. “I’ve been going through… stuff. A lot of stuff, and the only person I’ve been able to talk to and trust is a… um, recovering,”  _ homicidal maniac,  _ “addict.”

   It wasn’t exactly the best way to describe Spike, but “I made with the kissyface with a guy who used to eat people,” probably wouldn’t go over very well. Not even in Sunnydale…. Maybe  _ especially _ not in Sunnydale. 

   “The thing is he’s the only one who makes me feel… anything good, and I’m pretty sure he’s bad for me.”

   Bad like a triple chocolate fudge cake. So decadent and good, but it would clog up your arteries and kill you if you crammed it all in your face at once. She… wanted to gobble him down anyway.

   “Anyway, he says he loves me. That he’s staying clean because, uh, he knows it would hurt me if he wasn’t.” She decided that the addiction in question was general evil rather than killing. The chip stopped Spike from hurting or killing humans, but not any of the other things he could be doing. It hadn’t forced him to do all those things for her and… and Dawn when Glory had been searching for the key. “I wish I could believe him, but I know people can’t change their natur-”

   “Bullshit,” John-the-biker cut in bluntly. Like Buffy, he was a voluntary, though unlike her, he was actually taking his meds. Antipsychotics in his case. “Sorry,” he said, not really sounding it, “but that’s what it is. You can’t force someone to change, but if they want it enough, a person  _ can _ change. That’s why I’m here.” He’d talked about that, how he’d realized he was a danger to his kids the way he was. “If you just don’t want to be with the guy, that’s okay. You have to do what’s right for you. But don’t use ‘people don’t change’ as an excuse.”

   “Well,” the group leader asked Buffy. “Why do you think this man is bad for you? Does he hurt you?”

“Nothing I don’t… um… well, it’s… um… our relationship has been complicated, like… we spar and things? We, um… met… uh… in some martial arts competitions, I guess? And we were on different sides, and… we still do… some… things that might hurt, but… well, actually he can’t now, ‘cause he… uh… hurt his back and can’t fight the same way, but I don’t see any of that stuff as  _ hurting _ me, exactly. I mean, that’s just us.”

“And you kinda like that?” Katie asked with a wicked grin. “I can direct you to some websites on the difference between kink and abuse, if you want.”

“That’s… that’s not… um….” Buffy blushed. “Healthy people aren’t supposed to want that kind of thing.”

Katie raised an eyebrow. 

“I didn’t mean–”

“Yeah, you did,” Katie said. “I get it a lot.” 

“Leave her alone,” said Jonah, and Buffy realized he was talking to her. “Katie can like what she wants. It doesn’t mean she’s crazy.”

“That wasn’t what I–”

“Yeah, it was,” Jonah said. “Remember why I’m in here?”

Buffy did. Jonah was only seventeen. He had taken too many pills when he’d realized he was gay. He’d been fantasizing about men –  in particular, one man –  for a long time, and he couldn’t stop. Then his parents had found out about it and said it was against God’s law, and something about abominations, and Jonah had felt his life was over, and he’d tried to end it. He and Katie had actually bonded while they were here, even though Katie was Buffy’s age. He’d confessed a few days before that he no longer thought his attraction for men against God’s plan. 

   “It’s not that simple,” Buffy said. Part of her really wished it was. That she could just call it “kink” and give into the smoochies and the snuggles and pretend Spike wasn’t a mass murdering demon. Or throw him away and somehow pretend that he hadn’t been trying so hard to be good. But he was a  _ vampire _ . And she was the  _ slayer _ . And it wasn’t going to either go away, or be solved with a simple label. “This isn’t something normal like being gay or even something… controllable like your handcuff thing. I wish it was. It’s just….” She broke off with a heavy sigh and found herself with her face in her hands. 

“It’s okay, Buffy,” the group leader said after a moment. “You’re obviously very conflicted about this relationship.”

“Conflicted is an understatement,” Buffy said. “Conflict is, like, what we  _ are _ .” 

“But you’re feeling yourself drawn to him now. After your experience.”

“Even before,” Buffy muttered. She gestured to her wrists. “Someone wondered if this thing might have been a cry for help, hoping he’d come rescue me. Which he did, by the way.”

“Has he done that a lot?” the group leader asked. “Been there as your support in difficult situations?”

Buffy swallowed. “Always.” It felt like a goddamned confession of her sins, that Spike had kept being there for her. 

    Then she shook her head. “The thing is, I’ve dated an… addict before. He was clean when I met him. He’d….” She paused, trying to figure out a way to weave the soul into the addiction analogy. “Found religion. And then he sort of  _ un _ found it and went back to using. Someone tried to help him get clean again, but he, um… he hurt her real bad.” He’d killed her and left her on Giles’s bed, actually. “My friends and fam-” Her throat closed for a moment. She didn’t have family. Not anymore. “My friends would never let me date another addict.”

   “Never  _ let _ you?” This was Alison, the woman with the dissociative disorder. Hers was mild, not so far as to having actual split-personality (something Buffy had been told was actually insanely rare, in real life) but did claim she had different people inside her who came out at different times. It wasn’t so far blocked that she couldn’t remember being those other people. It was an adaptive measure for sexual abuse, apparently – only one part of Alison was the abused person, and the rest could continue on with life without feeling the trauma – but it wasn’t the healthiest one out there. Alison was here trying new medications to deal with the bi-polar she also had. 

She was also insanely clever, which was probably why she’d come up with an adaptive measure at the age of five for a kind of horror that Buffy couldn’t even contemplate, and Buffy fought monsters daily. “Buffy,” Alison went on, “your friends can’t run your life for you. And you can’t judge one person based on what someone else did. Your ex fell off the wagon. That was him. Not this other guy.”

    “But… I really think the… the religion really helped my ex. When he went back to it he said he was really sorry for all the stuff he’d done when he was using. And this guy… well, he has like… no use for religion. He seems to be trying to stay good all on his own.”

    “Your ex was really sorry, huh?” Alison said. “You know, the older I get, the less I care about what people say, I only look at what people do. I don’t care how sorry he said he was. Religion can help, but it seems like your ex just switched addictions. When the new one didn’t hit the right buttons, he went back. This other guy isn’t him. It’s like what John said, if you don’t want to date him, fine, but don’t blame him for what your ex did.”

“I think the real problem is, why do you feel the need to reach out for him?” the group leader asked. “Do the two of you hold each other up, or keep each other down?” 

“I… have no idea.” 

“Well, I think that’s the question you need to ask yourself. Not is it right to date him, but is he helping or making things worse.” 

Buffy nodded. Trouble was, she thought he would make things worse, as far as her friends were concerned. But… when he was there with her… he made her feel better….

That was it, then. She just couldn’t let him be there with her anymore. At all. The temptation was too great, and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair….

“Is that all, Buffy?”

Buffy nodded. 

“Thank you very much for sharing. Okay, we have a new person in group today,” the group leader said, indicating a wraith-thin girl who sat mousily in her chair in bulky sweatshirt. “Are you willing to share, Tanya?”

   “Um… I guess,” Tanya said. “I… I’m in here ‘cause I don’t want to eat. My mom says I’m anorexic.” With encouragement and prompting, Tanya kept talking, and her story… it wasn’t pretty. “Well, when I was fifteen, there was this guy? I met at the Bronze?” There was an odd, uncertain tone to her voice. “He said he was freshman in college. He seemed so mature and mysterious. And, and he said he loved me?”

   Buffy listened as Tanya continued on, feeling sort of numbly horrified. The guy had turned out to be twenty-six, and along with lover, had taken on the role of the absentee father that had walked out when Tanya had been twelve. She’d dropped out of high school to move in with him, becoming a perfect little housewife, doing all of the work of running a household like an adult would. Then, once she’d turned eighteen….

   “He, uh, he kicked me out for getting old and fat, so I had to go back to my mom. But I still love him, so I stopped pigging out. No food, so he’d love me again. He’d said I was his destiny.” She smiled painfully. “I just.... I’m so gross, and I need to be perfect for him. To be his destiny again. But I couldn’t even do that right. Mom made me come here after I passed out a bunch from not eating enough. Malnutrition, they said, but… I’m scared of getting fat again. So I don’t know.”

Buffy had determined not to let Spike see her again. But after that little sob story she felt anxious and weepy and even shaky. Tanya’s history had cut  _ far _ too close to home, in far too many ways. Buffy stood up from group and turned to find Spike, standing in the doorway to the common room, his hair a little singed. He’d gone through the  _ sun _ to come and see her again?

   “Um. Hi, Buffy,” he said. “Look… I… I wanted to talk to you. Um–”

   “Shut up,” Buffy said, dragging him through the common room and into the art supply closet.

   She immediately slammed him up against the paint rack, feeling needy and strangely vulnerable as she pressed her mouth to his, as if the contact could sear the thoughts from her mind. He groaned, his arms going around her, and the usual fire sprang up between them. Buffy lost herself in it. Heated breaths and strong arms and the shape of his body – just the right size for this, as if he’d been specifically designed to fit against her – and the scent and weight of him. The feel of those clever lips and what he could do with that wicked, wicked tongue, and oh, god. 

   The sensation of it passed all the way through her. Down to her groin and past it, even into her toes, making her whimper and moan. But she had to keep quiet, swallow it back as best as she could because art therapy was going to start in, like, half an hour, and there was no way she was letting Spike go before that. Because if she did, he’d insist on talking (hadn’t he gotten the memo that boys aren’t supposed to be into the whole talking thing?) instead of kissing, and she didn’t want to talk. She wanted his body and his lips and his scent to take it all away. Everything. Heaven and Dawn and Giles and Angel and Willow and Xander and her mom and her deadbeat dad. And especially Spike. Spike had to take the confusion of himself away, because there was nothing else that could.

She’d determined to avoid him. She knew he wasn’t good for her. She had to stay completely away from him.

   But not yet. 

 

 


	15. Child

 

 

    Spike felt like celebrating. Buffy was leaving the hospital! She was coming home, she was  _ better! _ Or better enough she felt ready to face something, which was better enough to be going on with. Maybe even enough to be going on with him….

He headed down to Willy’s bar and picked up some of the donor blood he had in stock, even though Willy’s prices were an insult. If Spike could just arrange to pick up the donor blood wholesale… but that required strong-arming humans, not demons, and it wasn’t worth it to get into the blood trade. Spike wasn’t a dealer, he was a warrior, dammit. That was what he was best at, and what he meant to keep doing. But Dawn wanted to taste human, and this was the safest and best way to get her some. 

    It was a fair request. She was a sodding vampire and all. He felt if he kept her from it entirely she’d try to get some on her own, and the easiest way for her to do that would involve someone dying and a very brassed off slayer. 

    No, just get her some and watch her, and take a pint himself. He felt like celebrating, and vampires got sod all out of champagne. It was time to introduce Dawn to her man-eating birthright.  

    He’d have to just tell her it was a surprise treat, not a celebration. Because he hadn’t actually told her that Buffy had tried to kill herself to start with, let alone about the mental ward thing, so… he wasn’t sure how to bring it up.

He hadn’t mentioned Buffy at all, if he could help it. He knew Dawn was going to be conflicted about her, more than about anyone else. Vampires had strange relationships to family. They tended to want to kill them first. It was more than just because they were easy targets; there was some desperate need to take the things they loved inside them and carry them. Forever. Spike himself…. 

    Poor Dru’s family had all been slaughtered before she was turned, and Spike remembered holding her, comforting her, because she couldn’t go and find them and take them inside, absorb their blood and be one with them. Often, Spike felt that was the worst thing Angelus had ever done. Yeah, torture, mind games, those were terrible, but to deprive Drusilla of choosing the death of her own family? That was beyond the pale. 

    The thing of it was, if Dawn and Buffy were ever going to be family again, in any way other than a violent attempt at mutual destruction, (which sounded like most families Spike had heard of, human or otherwise, now he thought on it) Spike knew Dawn was going to have to be more… well, Dawn. He had to connect her to her humanity or she’d see no point in doing anything with humans beyond eating them. 

    While he wasn’t really one for self-contemplation, Spike had sometimes wondered if the amount of humanity he himself had was because he kept himself immersed. TV, music, technology, anything that was out and about and vibrant in the world, letting him grow and change with the times, unlike those daft Aurelians or bloody Angel, baffled by a cell phone. Dying had opened him up to life, and he’d jumped right into all of the things he’d been too afraid to experience. There were things he would absolutely never have even thought of doing as a human, but for other things…. 

   Well, like he’d said to Tara, there had always been an awful lot of daft little William Pratt mixed in with the demon he had become. Not that he would have admitted that to another demon or anything, but it hadn’t been just the newborn vamp what had decided to hunt up his old “mates” and make them eat their words. Literally in one case.

   Anyroad, seemed to him the best way to get Dawn to be more  _ Dawnish _ was to coax that human part out of her. Towards that end, he’d nicked a DVD player and a few DVDs – would’ve been easier to go with a VCR since the things were being phased out, but only the best for his niblet – and had stocked up on sodas and crisps. He’d even scrounged up enough dosh to get a pizza. Anchovy, pepperoni, and onion, just like they used to get sometimes over the summer. 

   When he got back to the crypt with it all he found Dawn stretched out on the new loveseat, paging through one of his books. She put the book down as he came in, her face brightening. Part of it was the minion still in her, but it was also just Dawn being Dawn. 

   “Spike, you’re back!” She jumped up, her face scrunching up suddenly in a frown as she eyed the pizza box. “What’s that?”

   “Obvious, innit? ‘S a camel,” he said dryly. He couldn’t help grinning a bit as she rolled her eyes. Despite all that had happened, was still fun to twit the girl. “You’ve been good lately. Thought we could have some pizza and watch a movie.”

   She still seemed puzzled. “A movie sounds good, but why pizza?” She looked at it dubiously as he handed over the box, then glanced up at him as if she’d never seen him before. “What is it with you and human food, anyway? That never seemed weird to me before. But now…?”

   He shrugged and went to hook up everything all right and proper on the telly. It  _ hadn’t  _ seemed odd to her before. She’d just taken it in stride that he was a vampire who liked human food, even the godawful experiments she came up with. But now…. Dawn and not-Dawn. 

    He’d a nicer telly now so it didn’t take long to get everything sorted. When he turned back, she was sat down again, the pizza box on her lap and a couple of sodas out and ready for them. Good girl. 

   He dropped down beside her and used the remote to start up the DVD before opening the box and snagging a slice. Dawn sighed melodramatically before doing the same, her face wrinkling up in distaste as she chewed with exaggerated motions. It reminded him of drinking with Buffy and the face she’d made every time she’d taken a swig. Absolutely adorable. 

   “It’s not as good as blood,” Dawn complained. 

   “Well, no, ‘course it’s not, but you can’t judge it that way.” 

   Even the worst cold, dead pig had that fizzle of life in it. None of that with human food. Or well, most human food, anyway. Rare steak - especially from one of those fancy places that had it organic from grass fed cows - was an interesting little treat. One of these days, he’d take Dawn out for some. Maybe go to the cinema after. She’d need more training first, though. Shouldn’t be too hard, that. She wouldn’t really get not hunting to please Buffy, but even mad-as-a-hatter Dru had understood about not messing your bed if you meant to continue lying in it. 

   “It’s its own thing now, like how you wouldn’t judge a soda, or something by how filling it was compared to actual food. Focus on the taste, and how it compares to other human food.”

   Dawn took another bite, slow and considering and with none of the earlier theatrics. “It’s… different,” she said, eyes wide with surprise. “The flavors all kinda….” She paused, looking for the right word. “Pop.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Still not sure if I like it, though.”

    Human Dawn would have loved it. She’d have been bouncing about like an excited puppy, asking for other things to taste. But this wasn’t human Dawn. This was a very young vampire that had absorbed Dawn’s personality like a mushroom sautéed in a butter wine sauce. No matter what he did, she’d still be a mushroom. She would  _ always _ be a mushroom.

_ I let the sorry sod what turned her off too easy. _ It wasn’t the first time he’d thought that. Should have kept him. Chained him up in a tub with garlic stuffed into every orifice and drew him a nice, caustic bath of holy water, filling it oh-so-slowly, while the little wanker tried to scream and beg for mercy.

   “We’re watching the Iron Giant?”

   The sound of Dawn’s incredulous voice snapped him out of the vivid daydream. The previews had ended, leaving them on the DVD menu screen.

   “What’s wrong with it?” More not-Dawn. She’d always liked the film before. It had been one of their favorites, along with Nightmare Before Christmas and The Last Unicorn. He eyed her carefully. If he couldn’t watch cartoons with Dawnie, there was nothing left of the chit.

   “Oh, um… nothing?” She looked confused and uncertain, her gormless, mushroomy self with no notion of what she’d done wrong. “It’s just… couldn’t we watch something with bloodshed? Like a slasher flick? All the people screaming and running and bleeding all over the place?”

   And there it was. The puppy dog excitement. He couldn’t blame her. Those movies really were a lark. The daft humans running about all willy nilly, letting themselves get picked off one or two at a time. Fun stuff, but not the point of what they were doing tonight.

   “Maybe in a week or so. Right now, just eat your pizza and watch the bloody film. There’ll be another treat later.”

“Yeah, but it’s  _ not _ a bloody film. That’s the point I was trying make, here,” she muttered. But she settled in anyway. Occasionally Spike would nudge her and make her take more pizza, which she dutifully managed to choke down two whole pieces of. She couldn’t handle the crusts. He didn’t make her. 

   Eventually, after she’d managed the pizza, Dawn leaned in towards him. It seemed like just wanting a bit of a snuggle instead of the handsy stuff she’d been on to lately, so he allowed it, even putting his arm around her. She sighed and rested her head on his chest as they watched the telly. It was nice. He should have done this before, dammit. He’d missed this. Hell… he’d been missing this ever since Buffy got back and the Scoobies stopped using him for Dawn patrol. No, it wasn’t quite the same. There was no sweet heartbeat, and she was cold and dead, and she didn’t smell like Sunday dinner anymore, but it was… it was still Dawn. Sort of. 

“I love you, Spike,” she whispered, so low he was pretty sure she thought he couldn’t hear it. 

“Doesn’t have to be a secret, little bit,” he said quiet. “Love you, too.” 

She hummed and squeezed him, and they sat and watched the noble sacrifice of the machine of death. And for a little bit at least, she was really Dawn. Or close enough. And everything was good.

 

***

 

This was so damn good. 

Spike was being nice, and letting her snuggle, and Dawn had missed that. And yeah, okay, it wasn’t  _ quite _ what she wanted. If she had her way, they wouldn’t have pizza on the floor in front of them. They’d have a victim there, maybe chained up. And they’d be watching Nightmare on Elm Street or something,  _ and _ snuggling. But it was still damn good, even though she now thought the Iron Giant was a bit of a wuss, and he should have blasted the head off the kid, and then the army, and then shunted the bomb into the center of the nearest town. 

Though she had to admit… him flying up into the sky to save everyone was pretty noble. 

She was twisted up. She liked the saving people thing, while wanting those same people dead and bloody? It hurt her head, and she snuggled hard against Spike, because he seemed to be able to cut through all this vampire/human good/evil shit with perfect ease, and Dawn would have been helpless against it without him. 

Finally the cartoon ended (why a cartoon? Why did he want to watch cartoons? It wasn’t like she was some human kid anymore) and Spike flicked off the TV. “Okay, we’re done,” Spike said. He shunted the pizza box aside with his foot and shrugged Dawn off. “Here, check the bar, get us a couple tumblers.”

   “What for?”

   “I promised you a treat.”

   Dawn bounced off the loveseat, excited. “Do I get blood?  _ Real  _ blood?”

   “Pig is real, little bit,” Spike said. “But yes, human. Just a taste, now. Go.”

   Dawn ran, and was back upstairs with the tumblers before he’d even pulled the donation bag out of the fridge. He chuckled as she set the tumblers down on the sarcophagus and bounced up and down.  

   “Whose was it? Did you kill to get it?”

    “No idea, and no I didn’t,” Spike said, and Dawn sighed. She known it was a dumb question even as she asked it. She didn’t like to think about Spike being handicapped by that thing in his head. It would have been nice if he’d found some way around it, just for her. The idea of Spike out there, killing things… mmm. It did squidgy things to her insides. “Willy has a line on the near-expired blood from the hospital. They can’t use it for transfusions anymore, so he gets it for peanuts.”

   “Sour expired blood?” Dawn said. “Does not sound appetizing.”

   “You wanted human blood, I got you some. Don’t get grabby.”

_  Señor  _ Spike again. “Sorry,” Dawn said, suitably chastened.

   “It’s not gone off. They’re just hyper about dates. It’s for medicine,” Spike said. “I’m glad of it. Sometimes there are people need the stuff more than we do.”

   Dawn frowned. It sounded completely opposite from everything her nature told her. Spike had this weird humany undernature which really confused her. He was evil, just like she was, but sometimes she wondered if the chip messed up his brain, more than just stopped him from killing.

   “Why don’t we just get it from all those people out there?” Dawn said. “Every time I think about it…. They’re just walking around!”

   “Happy meals with legs, I know,” Spike said, a sort of wistful tone to his voice. “It’s still hard for me, sometimes, but really, pet, just don’t.”

   “But they’re  _ right there _ ! And they’re  _ free _ , none of this  _ on-the-cheap _ stuff.”

   “They’re not free,” Spike said. “There’s always a price.”

   “Like what?”

   Spike poured the blood from the bag into the tumblers. “You want it warm or cold?”

   That wasn’t exactly an answer to her question, which meant he didn’t want to answer. “Is it better warm?” she asked instead.

   “Ninety-eight point six,” Spike said. “I’ll heat it up.” He filled a pan with water from the bucket and set it on the hotplate, and then tucked the tumblers inside. “When I was in Prague... Dru and I. We were together then. I killed someone...  god, I don’t even remember. I think it was a girl. Someone caught me at it, a row ensued, I killed him, too. But he had a bunch of his mates with him, and then I was in a brawl. The brawl turned into a mob, and the mob got to Drusilla.” He looked up at Dawn. “I nearly lost her. She was beaten, poisoned... she should by all rights have dusted that night. All ‘cause I couldn’t control my appetite.”

   “But that was Prague,” Dawn said. “And if you were careful not to get caught...”

   “You think you can do that?” Spike asked. “Closer to home. Remember that night I chained up Buffy?”

   Dawn giggled. “Oh, yeah! God, that was so sweet of you!”

   Spike shook his head. “You didn’t seem to think so at the time, little bit. You were right brassed off, as I recall.”

   “Oh, but... I mean....” She frowned. “I... guess I was. But now when I look at it. What Buffy said? Weren’t you gonna kill someone for her?”

   “Yeah,” Spike said. “Drusilla.” He paused. “My sire,” he added.

   Dawn stared at him. “Oh my god. Seriously?”

   Spike nodded.

   “Ho-ly shhhit!” She’d had no idea at the time what that meant. That was the single most romantic thing she’d ever heard of!

   Spike chuckled. “Hey, finally. Someone gets it. A year too late, but what the hell.”

   “Oh, hell, yeah, I get it! If someone ever chained me up and offered me a sacrifice like that I’d be like... do me now you hunk of sexy!”

   “Yeah, that’s what I thought Buffy’d say. But she was human, niblet. Didn’t quite see it the same way you and I do.”

   Dawn sat down, weak in the knees. It was mind boggling. It was more than just laying his kill at her feet, it was a true ultimate sacrifice, almost a rejection of his very self. And Buffy had only gotten pissed off?

   She had no idea.

   “Wow. I mean... I mean wow.” Dawn had known he was nearly tortured to death by Glory, but that was just a show of endurance. But the chain thing? Just the boss factor alone, as he took control there. And then sacrifice on  _ top _ of that? Of his beloved  _ sire _ no less? Dawn already knew she couldn’t ever have done it herself. She loved Spike too much. She couldn’t imagine loving anyone else enough that she’d even be  _ capable _ of sacrificing him, let alone willing to. “Why didn’t you just peel off your skin and hand it to her?”

   “I’d have done that too, if I thought it’d’ve worked,” Spike said. “But the thing is, Dru had killed someone for me that night. Like you offered, before?” Dawn hadn’t known this part of the story. “Headed down to the Bronze, and Dru snapped some bint’s neck, and I was....” He stopped. He looked confused. “Anyway, I was all hot with blood when I got back. And the thing is, if I hadn’t been, I’d have known Buffy wouldn’t get it. She’s not a vampire. The sire thing means bugger all to her, and the sacrifice just seems like destruction, and... well, the chain thing, I probably should have asked first.”

  “Wouldn’t that like totally kill the boss factor though?”

   “Yeah, Buffy likes being boss, little bit. If I’m gonna play boss, she’d want to know in advance. Anyway. It was ‘cause I’d let myself go down that path, and I got sloppy, and couldn’t think straight. And I mucked it all up, and that put me totally off Buffy’s radar.” He picked up one of the warmed tumblers and set it in Dawn’s hand. “Had to nearly die to get back on it,” he said, kissing her forehead.

   Even the chaste kiss thrilled her, after hearing about his romantic exploits. “For me,” Dawn said. “You nearly died for me.”

   “Both of you,” Spike said. He took up his own glass. “Cheers.”

   Dawn licked her lips, held the tumbler to her mouth, and inhaled the aroma. Even the smell was like little tickles inside her, stroking her flesh with pleasure. She bit her lip and looked up at Spike, still just not sure she was really allowed….

   He’d taken a sip himself, so Dawn took a tiny sip, just a taste–!

   “Hey, slow down!” Spike said. He grabbed the tumbler and made her take a breath. “You nearly choked there.” He had an amused grin on his face. “Try again, and  _ slow _ this time.”

   Slow? How the hell was she supposed to drink that  _ slow _ ? Dawn coughed and sputtered with the taste of pure perfection poured over her tongue. “Bloody hell,” she breathed.

   Now she knew why Spike said that all the time. It was at the same time the most reverent and the most profane phrase in the world. Bloody. Hell. She was trembling. Even being sired, it hadn’t tasted like this. That had been strange, alluring and desperate in its way, and would have been fun to play with again, like being tickled or something. But it was  _ strange _ . It was all demony and magical and kinda beyond. This, human blood? It was  _ right!  _ It was the taste of life and... and  _ life _ ! Everything in her screamed,  _ More! _

   “Take a sip, try to hold it in your mouth. You get the flavor better that way.”

   Dawn obeyed, holding the fragrant blood like a flower against her tongue. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, just absorbing it. There was a strong impulse to swallow, and she couldn’t hold it long. She took another sip, and then the blood was gone, and all she could think was that she wanted more. She looked at the empty glass almost in tears. “Is there any more?”

   Spike grinned. “I got us three pints, to share, and that’s more than enough for you, little bit.”

   Dawn dipped her finger in the glass and tried to pull up every possible drop. She put them fingertip by fingertip into her mouth, humming and quivering as Spike pulled out another pint of blood and plopped it in the warm water.

   “God, Spike, the taste of this.”

   “I know.”

   “Is it all like this?”

   “No. This was probably suburban soccer mom, or somesuch. You get a lot of those in donor blood.”

   “You can tell?”

   Spike hesitated, holding the blood in his mouth for a second. “Female,” he said when he swallowed. “Well fed. Not an addict. Healthy. Out of adolescence, but pre-menopause....  _ Prob _ ably had Italian food the night before? and definitely coffee that morning.”

   Dawn blinked. “You can tell all that?”

   “Not always. But usually, yeah. You’ll notice, by the way, you can really taste the difference in the pig, too. That’s why I don’t buy the cheap stuff. If the porker’s been fed garbage, it’ll taste like it.”

   “But you can tell gender and age and what they ate?”

   “Of course.”

   “How?”

   Spike shrugged, his bragging face on. He was showing off, and Dawn knew it, and she didn’t care. “Aroma. And consistency. Hormone levels, blood cell count, and there’s an aftertaste of most foods if you know human foods well enough.”

   “And that’s why we eat human foods sometimes,” Dawn realized, the whole weird pizza thing suddenly making sense.

   Spike looked sad. “I’m hoping you’ll get to like ‘em again, pigeon. You should, there’s no real reason not to. I will say, though, as a vampire, spices are nice. Stronger foods linger in the blood, so I got real fond of things like onions and pepper.”

   Dawn took another fingertip full of blood. God, it was delicious. “You lived on this every day?”

   “Just about.”

   “Alive and warm and heart pumping like the dog?”

   “Mm-hm.”

   “And now... you’re not going to? Ever?” That had to be the saddest thing she’d ever heard. He’d gotten used to having this whenever he wanted, and now that was gone.

   “I don’t know about ever,” he said. “I’d....” He stopped and looked at Dawn suspiciously. Then he seemed to change what he was about to say. “The chip’s the reason for a lot of it.”

   Dawn nodded. That made sense, but she still got the feeling there was something he wasn’t telling her. She was trying to learn how to read him, and she usually failed. The guy had layers. Like those onions he was so fond of. “So until the chip’s out... no more?”

   “For the most part. Save this stuff.” He held his tumbler out to Dawn and raised it before bringing it to his lips.

   Dawn couldn’t help but think about how fun it would be to lick it off someone’s neck. Like... Spike’s, as he was swallowing, and she could see the adam’s apple moving in his throat.... God. It would have been awesome. “How the hell do you live without it?”

   He looked up at her, his eyes tilted at her coyly as his head was still angled down. It made him look very sad, and sort of dangerous. “You learn.”

   “How do you not... long for it? Don’t you just freak when you’re near a human being? I thought Tara smelled good, and I didn’t even know what I was missing...!”

   He paused, and then shrugged. “I’ll tell you, bit, it was damn hard at first. And your sis did  _ not help _ flashing her throat at me with this sodding bitemark scar still bright on it, pointing out all that blood just pum-ping-awayyy.” Dawn recognized Buffy’s teasing tone.

   “Oh, god, she did that? That’s just  _ cruel! _ ”

   “In the best way, I know,” Spike said, fond. He took the pint out of the warm water and took Dawn’s tumbler, letting her have the whole thing. He took the last swallow from the bag and handed the glass to her. “High school blood drive,” he said. “Probably a jock.”

   Dawn took the glass and drank it down, slowly but steadily, savoring every swallow before she’d let herself have another. “Can I have the last one?” she asked before he’d even opened it.

   “You can have a finger of it,” he said. “Then I think that’s enough for you.”

   Dawn shivered and forced herself not to whine, “But I  _ want _ it!” She knew he wouldn’t like that, and sometimes when he didn’t like things he’d hit her. She actually preferred that to when he got all cold and hard and turned away from her. Sometimes she actually  _ tried _ to get him to hit her....

   But not tonight. He might take the blood away.

   She bit her lip and waited for him to give her her very last sip. Spike paused as he tasted this one, and then sat down to savor it. “What is it?” Dawn only had two fingers width in her glass. “What is it? Is it good?”

   “More from that blood drive,” Spike said. “Female. Hormones high.” He shook himself vamp to enjoy. “Shut up and drink.”

   Spike sipped his pint slowly, running his tongue over his teeth and breathing deep. Dawn watched him, feeling strange. He was really cute and powerful all vamped up, with his eyes closed as he savored the blood. She’d liked her last swallow, but no more or less than the others. Clearly he was getting something different out of this one. High school blood drive, female....

   He liked young women.

   The taste of blood was still rich on her tongue. It made her feel excited and hot and tingly, and she just wanted to dart out and hunt for more, or go for a run, or find a demon to slay, or maybe... maybe....

   She reached around from behind the loveseat and started rubbing Spike’s shoulders. “Here. You look tense.”

   Spike paused at the last swallow of his blood and then shrugged himself out of Dawn’s grip. “Dawn, pet. Quit it.”

   Dawn wasn’t even entirely sure what she was doing, but she wanted to be close to him, even though he’d let down the bumpies. “Why?” She ran her finger down his neck.

   “Stop.” He was very firm now.

   Dawn stopped, but she climbed up onto the arm of the loveseat, put her elbows on her knees, and stared down at him. Maybe she could pull a little boss factor if she perched up here. “You know what loveseats are for, right?”

   “So two people can sit and watch movies comfortably.”

   “And maybe make–”

   “Don’t,” he said darkly. “Don’t even say it. Just don’t.”

   She wasn’t even sure  _ how _ to say it. All the words seemed either really empty or really silly. She tried to skirt around them. “But Spike... I mean... we have a-a bond, right? And we... you know, care about each other. I mean the two of us could–”

   “Dawn, there’s a whole bunch of things you could be saying right now, and I don’t really want to hear any of them.” He turned to look at her. “I’m in love with Buffy. Wildly...  _ hopelessly _ in love with Buffy. I’m your sire. That’s it. So stop.”

   “But you were with Drusilla,” Dawn said. “And she was  _ your _ sire.”

   Spike stood up and started moving things around on the sarcophagus, shunting aside the empty blood bags, clearing up the water. He was being far rougher about it than he needed to be. “That was different, and that was her, and there wasn’t any Buffy, all right?”

   “Well... okay. I get you’d still want Buffy. But, I mean, in the meantime. I mean I’m here and she’s there, and I... I guess I’d be okay if you had her t–”

   “Shut it!” Spike roared. “Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it–” This did not look normal. She’d have understood if he’d left, or even if he’d hit her, but he was just grabbing at his head like his pain chip had gone off or something. Finally he took a deep breath and glared at her. “Dawn. Do not ever broach this subject again. One day I’m sure you’ll find a nice vampire bloke who’s not too daft, and I’ll beat him into submission for you. In the meantime, just  _ shut the hell up! _ ” He shoved the human donation bags into the trash box. “And that’s more than enough human for you, catch me doing this again.”

   It was a worse threat than if he’d hit her. “That’s not fair. I’m just saying what we’re both thinking.”

   Spike rounded on her, grabbed her shirt, and lifted her up. “It is not!” he roared into her face. Then he threw her. She flew across the crypt, slammed into the wall, and her blood was up now. She came up, vamped and ready to fight him, because this was going to be  _ awesome _ , but he didn’t seem to actually want to fight her.

   “What is  _ wrong _ with you?” he shouted at her. “Just be Dawn, can’t you, be Dawn! Stop this! It’s ugly, it’s not bloody you.  _ Be Dawn! _ ”

   “ _ I’m what you made me! _ ” Dawn shouted back.

   Spike punched her, and it wasn’t awesome. It just hurt. Most of the violence he threw at her after that first day was him showing that he cared, in his own dark way. This wasn’t.

   Her own boss factor was totally gone now. She’d only been trying it on to start with, like dress up. “I’m sorry,” she whimpered, cowering. “I’m sorry, Spike. I just want to be what you want.”

   Spike picked her up and glared at her. “I just want you to be you, dammit! I just want...” He grabbed her then, and held her close, and she didn’t know if she was supposed to hug him back or not, so she just stood there. After a long moment, Spike released her. “Go to bed,” he said, without looking at her.

   “It’s still night.”

   “Dawn!”

   She didn’t argue. She just went down to her cushioned coffin and tried, once again, to fill in her journal.

   She couldn’t figure out what to say. Her journals, which used to be long and eloquent things expounding on her emotional state and her readings of everyone around her, had turned into terse and really awkward sentences as she tried to figure out how she felt. If she’d been human, the entry she’d have written for tonight would have taken three or four pages, spending at least five paragraphs on the taste of human blood, and seven on trying to make sense of Spike’s moods, and how she wanted to be somewhere else. Instead, as she listened to Spike breaking and beating something up upstairs, she only managed to get three sentences out.

_    Tried human blood tonight. Spike’s hard to understand. We both miss Buffy. _

 


	16. Loanshark

 

 

   “Why do I have to do this?”

   “Because I don’t want to live with a moron,” Spike said, with zero sympathy.

   Dawn glared at her math book. “Tara? Tell Spike it’s not fair,” she whined. “I’m not a kid anymore. I mean, like,  _ at all. _ I shouldn’t have to do school stuff.”

   “I actually agree with Spike on this one,” Tara said. “Just because you were turned to the dark forces is no excuse to stint on your homework.”

   Dawn rolled her eyes. “But it’s not like  _ you _ had to do this shit.”

   “Watch your language in front of Tara, bit. She’s a sensitive soul.”

   Tara couldn’t help but smirk.

   Dawn sighed, and then turned her glare on Spike. “It’s not as if you’re all great student guy yourself. You told me schools are just where people get turned into mindless automatons.”

   “Well, this isn’t school, is it.”

   “Good thing,” Tara muttered. The thought of Dawn back in her classes sparked visions of bloodshed that made her cringe.

   “It’s still the same thing. And I’ll bet you were just, I don’t know, running crazy over London and stealing shit when you were my age.”

   “I’ll have you know, I was at Eton, studying bloody Latin,” Spike said, shocking Tara silly. Spike ignored her sudden stare and pointed Dawn at the math book. “Geometry. Get on it.  _ Now. _ ”

   Dawn took a deep breath, and actually applied herself to her homework, in a way Tara had never been able to get Dawn to do back when she was human. There was a mixture of boss, big brother, and dad in how Spike handled her. She’d been watching the dynamic, and was amazed at how well he got her to listen.

   After the break up, Tara had cleared her own things out of Willow’s room, and had arranged to move back into the dorms. While she was there, she’d grabbed quite a handful of Dawn’s clothes and personal items, and brought them to Spike’s crypt in daylight. She wanted daylight to retreat to. She needn’t have worried. Dawn wasn’t upstairs when she’d dropped off the boxes, but even since then, Tara hadn’t felt unsafe around her. It felt as if Dawn had taken Tara off the menu.

   Spike had gone through Dawn’s things before giving them to her. He’d kept back the photos of Joyce and Buffy, which Tara had been so careful to pack, saying it was too soon. “Don’t want to cause a fixation.” He’d stashed the photos behind the fridge to give to Dawn later, and begged once again for her school syllabus.

   Tara had gone to the school and gotten it with a lame excuse about a sick friend. There was a shrine to Dawn and Janice at the front gate. Tara had been tempted to collect some of the teddy bears and cards that had been pinned there, and give them to Dawn so she could know how much she was missed by her schoolmates. But after what Spike had said about fixations, she didn’t dare.

   That was the thing about Dawn. She was Dawn. But she was scary. Even without threatening anyone, the very air around her was different. Her aura was gone, replaced by the demonic energies which Tara had never been able to read. She’d chatter on, like always, and then seemingly out of random some utter horror would come spilling out of her mouth, as she spoke about ripping someone’s head off, or some other unspeakable evil. She also seemed very detached from the turning. Tara had asked about it, and Dawn’s response to what had happened had been flippant and dismissive. It disturbed Tara. 

   If the Scoobies had decided they wanted to try and train up Dawn even as a vampire, Tara knew they would have been up the creek without Spike’s knowledge. The things that Tara had known about Dawn, the ways she had gotten her to listen, none of them applied anymore. 

   Tara stood to go, and Spike gestured to her to join him across the crypt, then asked low, “So how is...?”

   “Oh, B-Buffy?” She wasn’t sure how to respond. She’d only seen her the once since she got out of the hospital, and only really the once  _ in _ the hospital, that one day she had been sure she wouldn’t run into Willow. “Um. She’s doing... um. I really only see her on Tuesdays.” 

   “What’s happening Tuesdays?”

   “The group grief therapy, at the library? I said I’d do it with her, ‘cause... um. W-well, I was... sad about things, too.”

   Spike nodded. “And is that going well?”

   “We’ve only had the one meeting. But... yeah.” Tara looked over at Dawn. “When are you going to tell her?”

   “Soon.”

   “You’ve been saying  _ soon _ ever since–”

   “I know, but I mean it this time. Now that she’s out and about, I mean... I expected her at my crypt before this.” He sighed, and Tara detected something wistful in that.

   “Why?”

   Spike shrugged, looking uncomfortable. Had Buffy been visiting him a lot before the… before? She had been avoiding the Scoobies. It actually comforted Tara to think she might have been reaching out for Spike. The idea of Buffy being all alone… well. She’d been afraid it might lead to an action like Buffy had performed two weeks ago. Spike was a much better choice than that. 

   “Why haven’t you gone to find her?” 

   Spike shook his head. “I don’t like taking Dawn out too much until she’s better trained, and I can’t leave her here alone until after I talk to Buffy. Not now that Buffy’s out. I don’t want a repeat of Dawn’s little performance with you.”

   “Do you think she’d attack Buffy?”

   “I think they’d attack each other,” Spike said. “It’s her sister, pet, that instinct is  _ there _ . She’ll almost feel she needs to at first.”

   “I’m sure if you talk to Buffy before–”

   “Not Buffy.” He gazed over Tara’s head at Dawn. “Look, could you soften the blow a bit? Could you tell Buffy I’ve got something important to tell her, sort of prepare her? I think she’s avoiding me.”

   “I can tell her,” Tara said. She collected last week’s library books to return them for Spike, along with a list of new books he wanted her to borrow for Dawn. He claimed he used to get to the library himself, but he found it difficult these days. That was putting it mildly. Tara looked up at him. “Do you want me to just  _ tell  _ her? Maybe it would be better coming from me.”

   Spike shook his head. “The moment she understands what’s going on is going to be printed on Buffy’s brain for the rest of her life in glorious technicolor. You don’t want to be the narrator for this little tragedy, pet.”

   Tara waved goodbye to Dawn just as Spike sat down to make her do her geometry problem  _ correctly _ , not skipping any of the steps. She had never seen Spike so engaged in anything except violence. Maybe it was a tragedy. But it was also kind of beautiful, what he was trying to do. Spike really had managed to make... at least a pig-skin purse out of a sow’s ear.

 

***

 

   Dawn couldn’t focus. Geometry was boring. “Did you say you were at Eton?” she asked, stepping over Spike’s attempt to get her to do the problem right.

   “Yeah. Now, what do you do with the radius?”

   “Isn’t that some uppity-up snooty school? I thought you were cockney or something.”

   “The accent’s not quite... look, it doesn’t matter. I picked up the accent when I started hunting as a fledge.”

   “Why?”

   “Easier to blend in with the blokes I had a taste for at the time.”

   Dawn leaned back. Spike was still looking over the notebook, but she’d realized something. He didn’t want to do this, either. Some part of him felt like he should. If she kept him distracted, he might just chuck it all and they could go hunting or something. “Who did you have a taste for?”

   “Working class. Street rats. The frilly cuffs stayed in of a night, lots harder to snap up a gentleman or a deb. I had a big appetite.”

   “How big?”

   “Big.”

   “Well, how big?”

   Spike shrugged. “I’d hunt every night. You really only need to hunt about every week or so if you want to stay strong.” 

   “But you and I eat every day.” 

   “We’re not eating five liters of human in a sitting, pigeon. It’s actually a little easier living on butcher’s blood. Or pets.”

   “Pets?” 

   “You’re not focusing on your homework,” he said, with that sudden desperation he sometimes got to change the subject.  

   She’d learned to just let the subject change, but she didn’t have to stick with his first choice.“So how’d you get turned?”

   “This has nothing to do with geometry.”

   “Did it hurt?”

   Spike stopped and stared at her. “Yeah. Yeah, Dru had a thing about it hurting.”

   “She hurt and killed you,” Dawn said. “So how could you love her anyway?”

   Spike was silent for a long time. “I just did,” he said. “If you hadn’t noticed, niblet... love doesn’t mean you don’t get hurt. Quite the opposite for us, really.”

   “Is that why you hit me?”

   Spike leaned back and regarded her. “You want me to stop?” he finally asked.

   “No. I’d miss it.”

   “Well, then.”

   “It reminds me you’re strong,” Dawn said shyly. “I just wish I knew why you did it. I just want to make you happy, and sometimes you get so pissed off over, like... nothing.”

   Spike closed his eyes. “If you haven’t figured out the why yet, bit... you’re not gonna any time soon.”

   She frowned. “Would you still be hitting me if I was human?”

   “Did I ever?” 

   “You threatened me a lot. And, well. There was a chip.”

   “No. I wouldn’t be hitting you if you were still Daw  – human.”

   She caught the slip. And since it was exactly what she was going for, she seized on it. “You don’t think I’m Dawn.” Of course, he’d said as much. The first day she was turned. She had forgotten that. “Is that why you hit me?”

   “I hit you because you’re a vampire, little bit,” Spike said. “We thrive on violence as much as we do on blood.”

   “You haven’t answered my question.” 

   Spike looked down at the papers on the sarcophagus. “I know you’re not, niblet. But you remember Willow and them, they were going perform their little resurrection spell? And they didn’t tell you, ‘cause they thought you were too young. And they didn’t tell Giles, ‘cause frankly he’d have stopped them. And they didn’t tell me. And they didn’t tell me because they didn’t trust me. And I think they didn’t trust me… because there was a chance that what they brought back might be… pretty twisted. And the thing is, Willow knew that if any part of what came back was your sis? I wouldn’t let her get rid of it.” He looked over at Dawn. “Any part of you is my niblet, niblet? I won’t let anything happen to you.”

   “But… what about me? The not-Dawn.”

   “I love you too, bit. It’s just different.”

   “But if I’m not Dawn, why do I have to do Dawn stuff?” Dawn asked. “You’re not the same as you were, you don’t even have the same accent anymore, and you didn’t used to go by Spike.”

   “You want a new name, niblet?”

   “I don’t know. I just want you to quit treating me like a kid!” 

   “You are a kid,” Spike said. “You’re not even three weeks old. Now pick up your pencil and – ” Spike stopped suddenly. “Forget the pencil,” he said low. “Pull out a stake.” 

   “What’s going on?” 

   “We got company.” 

 

***

 

   “Well now,” said Teeth as he grimaced, showing all of his namesake. “I don’t think that was entirely fair. I just want what’s mine, Spike.”

   “And I’m telling you, you’re gonna get it,” Spike snapped. “What the hell did you think you were doing, bringing those thugs into my crypt?”

   “Business,” Teeth said. “And now you owe me for them too, Spike.” 

   Spike rolled his eyes. It hadn’t been that hard a fight. The three thugs had come in, thrown some stakes around, Spike had dusted two of them and then turned around to protect Dawn… only to discover she’d already half cornered the third guy, and was holding her ground. Spike had thrown her a few pointers, and she’d dusted the third guy within seconds. Spike was hard pressed not to swing her around in a circle with pride, but it wasn’t the time. 

   That had left only Teeth. 

   The problem Spike had with Teeth was, he needed the guy. There was a complete lack of bankers in Sunnydale who handled kitten exchange, and it was sometimes hard to translate rough-and-tumble into cold-hard-cash. Teeth was the guy who could handle that. The trouble was, he sometimes got it into his head that he was a big bad, and Spike always had to make the choice whether to disabuse him of that notion, (and maybe make him so brassed off he wouldn’t work with Spike in the future,) or tease him and play the helpless victim long enough to buy the time he needed to pay him off. Spike had always played the latter in the past, acting scared and pulling a run-around. Trouble was… he couldn’t afford to play weak these days. 

   “Who is this guy?” the reason for this asked behind him.

   “Teeth,” Spike snarled. “He’s a loanshark.”

   “Wait, a loan… shark?” Dawn burst into laughter. 

   “Very funny,” Teeth said. “Why do you think I took the job, little lady? If I was gonna grow up with the stigma, I figured I might as well get the spoils. What do you want to mess a guy’s suit for, Spike?”

   “You brought a bunch of thugs into my own  _ home _ ,” Spike snarled. 

   “I’ve done it before,” Teeth said. “You’ve never complained. Rough you up a little, you throw a bunch of lies at me, and we all go on our merry way. I paid those guys good blood for their loyalty, and you just turned them into dust! You owe me for that.”

   “I owe you your Siamese,” Spike said. “Not a drop more. My crypt is sacred these days, you get that?”

   “What for?”

   “It just is,” Spike said. He finally let Teeth go, and Teeth set about arranging his suit.

   “You trying to protect your little tart?” Teeth asked. “Trust me, if I’d known you’d found a fill-in for Dru, I wouldn’t have dared tread on your territory.”

   “She’s not – ” Spike stopped, realizing Teeth was right. Spike had been playing a different game lately, since he’d come back to Sunnydale. A bachelor's game. With the chip in his head and the slayer in his sights, he’d stopped playing Big Bad and chosen to play Wacky Neighbor instead. And the thing about Wacky Neighbor was, no one thought twice about waltzing into his flat. Spike had been okay with it, always sure he could protect himself from anything that invaded. Unless it was human. 

   This was no longer the case. He had someone else to protect now, and that meant… changing the game. 

   Which meant making that announcement. “Shit,” he muttered. 

   “What was that, Spike?” 

   “Nothing,” Spike said. “You’ll get your kittens, Teeth. I’m no welsher. But no more strong arm techniques, not in my crypt, not around my daughter.”

   “Your daughter?” 

   “Yeah. I’m a proud papa, now. And if you hadn’t noticed… she took out one of your men all on her lonesome. You might want to spread that little factoid around.” 

   “That Spike’s a family man again? Yeah. I remember,” Teeth said. “You weren’t the most hospitable guy back then.”

   “Got that right,” Spike said. “Big Bad’s back.” 

   “Should I be worried about a worker shortage?” Teeth asked. 

   “No,” Spike said. “We just want to be left alone. But we  _ do _ want to be left alone.” 

   “Got it,” Teeth said. 

   “You’ll get your kittens by the end of the month,” Spike said. “Or someone will come to you with something.” 

   “Something?” Teeth did not sound pleased. Spike let his fangs down, and growled. It was always impossible to read the shark demon’s expressions, but he smelled scared right enough. “Right, Spike. I know, you’re good for it. Take your time. I’ll just… uh...” he gestured toward the door and sauntered back out into the cemetery. 

   Spike closed the door and regarded it. He should invest in a lock for the thing…. “Get dressed for town, niblet. We’re going out.”

   “Out?” Dawn sounded excited. 

   “This isn’t a pleasure trip. Look your absolute best. Strong! Not hot. Damn, let me look at your wardrobe.”

   Dawn followed him down the crypt to her corner of the lair, a back corner of the lower level that Spike had screened off with blankets and rugs. “Where are we going?”

   “I need to show you to some people,” Spike said. “Let folks know you’re under my protection.” He rummaged in her dresser and then threw a black shirt at her. He went back to his own trunk and dug out a leather jacket he’d nicked for her, that he’d been saving for a special occasion. It wouldn’t have been protection from a slayer, but the thick leather would keep a normal person from being able to stake her easily. He was considering adding armor plates to the inner lining, at least over the heart. Anything that would make Dawn even a little bit safer.

   He’d never considered making body armor for Drusilla. But she was older than him, and had been stronger before she’d gotten sick, and she had that thrall thing. For all his gallant protection of his dark goddess, until that mob in Prague got hold of them she hadn’t needed it. 

   Dawn actually did. 

   And he’d already buggered up on that twice. 

   “Put that on.” 

   “Oh, my god – !” 

   “Squeal about it later, we haven’t time now,” Spike said, and Dawn dutifully put on the jacket. “Very fetching, now where’s your hairbrush?” He brusquely brushed out Dawn’s hair. Usually this was an enjoyable evening ritual, but Spike wasn’t up to teasing her just now. 

   “So where are we going?” 

   “To make an advertisement,” Spike said. “I gotta take you to Rack.” 

      


 


	17. Warlock

 

 

   Willow was flying.

   She’d been flying for hours, hovering on the ceiling, letting the power flow through her to the point her mind didn’t even register it all anymore. She saw dimensions, and prophecies, and visions of the past. She saw depth and power, she heard light, she could taste the sound the stars made. She could see through walls, across great distances, life and death and energy, so many sensations they held her immobile. She saw the whole of Sunnydale, people dancing, demons feeding, witches, their power glowing, tasting sweet in her mouth. There... there was Tara... across town at the college, an ember of sunlight and love...

   No. Look at something else. She turned her attention from the light to the darkness, searched for the shadows. They were everywhere.

   She could see the vampires of Sunnydale. Each vampire was a hole in the pattern, a human who wasn’t a human, a sinkhole where a soul should have been. There were dozens of them, most of them young, several gathering in cemeteries or in old abandoned houses. Enough that she could tell there would be hundreds if they weren’t kept at bay by the slayer. But they were. And so they were furtive. Most of the ones the Scoobies killed were newborns, failed attempts by the vampires to swell their ranks.

   And there, there was a deeper shadow nearby. Spike, coming through Rack’s cloak, a deep darkness, old, older than any of the other vampires left in Sunnydale, and stronger because of it. And more, more than just his age, though that was a large part of it. His blood had been strong all along. Willow saw, without quite knowing how, that if Spike had wanted it he could have gathered most all of the vampires left in town, declared himself their leader, and been a small king. She knew – she remembered – that he had done such things before, when he had his dark princess to provide for. Instead he was the lone wolf, slaying his own kind as they ranged leaderless and wild.

   All save for the puppy at his side. A dark sinkhole of a missing soul, a hole that went deep, deep, deep into the ether of the dimensions. Willow almost wanted to reach out and touch it, but she couldn’t. The power had her, and she couldn’t even move. But it didn’t matter, because they were coming in anyway, through the cloak, into the waiting room, and Spike turned to his puppy and pushed her hair out of her face and brushed non-existent lint from her clothes, and told her to stand up straight.     

   “Now in here, you keep your trap shut, your hands to yourself, and your feet next to mine, you got that? This guy is ruddy dangerous.”

   “So why are we going to see him?”

   “Because he’s the hub of the big bad in these parts,” Spike said. “And that’s helpful.”

   “So is he a friend?”

   “No.”

   The puppy nodded. “So... it’s okay if I need to kill him?”

   Spike laughed. “Don’t try it. But yes.”

   And Rack – darkly blazing Rack with his red smolder of power – opened the door to Spike’s shadow almost immediately. “Spike,” he said. “And someone new?” He smiled in sinister curiosity at the puppy. “You’re next.”

   “They just got here,” complained the warlock in the waiting room. “I’ve been waiting for like–”

   Rack moved his hand, brushing away a fly and the supplicant was thrown across the room, landed on the couch, and decided to wait some more, while Rack showed Spike and his shadow puppy into the room.

   Willow could see with her eyes now, not just her power, so it surprised her that she wasn’t surprised when she saw that the shadow puppy at Spike’s heels was a fresh faced brunette, slim and tall, and really more powerful than she knew. The shadow wolf puppy was Dawn, Dawn, and Willow had been so linked into the shape of the universe she’d known it already. But she hadn’t cared. And she still... didn’t care now.

   “So. Last of the Aurelians.”

   “I keep telling you, I was never a member of their sodding cult,” Spike said. “Did try my hand at being a casual Aurelian, at one point, Christmas and Easter and whatall, but the smelly buggers had no appreciation for chocolate eggs or Bed, Bath and Beyond gift baskets.”

   Willow giggled somewhere in her mind, trying to peel back the dimensions to find one where the Master was cooing over a collection of moisturizers and bath salts. No such luck, but there was a dimension where Dawn still lived, and wasn’t a vampire, and Buffy and Spike were… ha! Like that could ever happen. There was that one without any shrimp that Tara had liked the sound of. And a pretty, pretty where Willow herself led the vampires of Sunnydale. 

   And damn… she looked good as a vampire. She wondered idly if she should get herself a black corset, because she could really pull that look off. Would Tara have liked her in a black corset? Would she have liked her as a vampire? Both seemed equally likely to Willow in her current state, and Rack and Spike were still chattering below her, Spike never once taking his eyes off the warlock.

   “Then I crashed their Feast of St. Vigeous and was proper excommunicated. Dunno what they were so brassed off about.”

   “Well, there was that whole ‘slaughtering of half the congregation and dusting the Anointed One’ thing.”

   “Oh,  _ that _ ,” Spike said. “Don’t think anyone could have minded  _ that. _ ”

   Rack smiled. “Still. Even without following their religion, you are the last remaining descendant of the Master in Sunnydale.” Rack said quietly. “Except for...?” He glanced at Dawn. There was the heart of the banter. Rack knew Spike wouldn’t have brought Dawn just as arm-candy. “I thought you were past making minions, Spike,” Rack said, going over to his bar. “Thought it wasn’t your cup of tea. Left most of that to Drusilla.”

   “I’ve made a few,” Spike said, his face hard and unreadable. “Dru enjoyed making dollies, is all. Didn’t want to deprive her of her fun, now, did I?”

   “But this is more than a dolly. Isn’t she.” Rack stood and stared down at Dawn, and Dawn shrank a little.

   “Yeah,” Spike said, taking a subtle, proprietary hold of Dawn’s arm, in addition to his hand on her waist. “I wanted to introduce you to my daughter.”

   Daughter? Spike had a daughter? But he couldn’t… perform. Willow giggled silently again. Poor little neutered Spike. But there was Dawn, and she was all empty and dark, all the way down, down, Dawnie. Had she ever really been human at all?

   “Your daughter?” Rack raised an eyebrow. “And now how did you manage that? With your... little problem,” he said, the last two words in a bit of a teasing singsong.

   Spike only laughed. “I have ways.” He stood behind Dawn and kept his arm around her. Willow realized he’d never actually let go of Dawn at any point during this meeting. “She was important to me.”

   “Ahh,” Rack said. He came up to Dawn, and Dawn tensed... as did Spike, his hand tightening on her shoulder. “So fresh,” he mused, lifting Dawn’s chin. “She has no idea. Does she.”

   “She’s learning,” Spike said. “She’ll be around long enough to learn. So long as I have any say in the matter.”

   “She have a name?” Rack asked.

   Spike seemed to consider. Dawn gulped.

   “No. Let me guess,” Rack purred. He gently tilted Dawn’s face from side to side, reading her, staring into her eyes. Spike’s hand on her subtly tightened further. “Neither light nor dark. Neither day nor night. Neither shine nor shadow.” 

   He slid his hand down Dawn’s throat. Spike seemed to abruptly decide this was getting too intimate and grabbed it, staring Rack down. Suddenly, things didn’t seem quite so funny anymore, though Willow was still as high as the ceiling she rested against. Dawn likely saw nothing, but Willow could see it. A battle of wills in the mutual glares. Spike was handicapped, and they both knew it, but he was also the most powerful vampire in Sunnydale, and Rack had respect for that. Spike did not use his power as an elder. If he had chosen to gather all the vampires at his beck and call and turn them against someone – say Rack or, Willow realized, Buffy – he would have been formidable even with the chip keeping him from slaughtering humans himself.

   Rack needed Spike, Willow realized. In his way, Spike  _ was _ the small king. He was a distant king who slaughtered his subjects rather than ruling them, and didn’t in any way demand their respect, but his very presence kept Sunnydale from being under the auspices of any other powerful vampire. Spike preferred to get into it himself, rather than rule, but he had the power to rule if he chose. If Rack liked the status quo – no organized vampires, no new masters, no vampiric threat to his power as warlock – he needed to keep Spike happy.

   “Dusk,” Rack said quietly. “Her name is Dusk.”

   Spike shrugged. “Close enough.” He pulled Dawn slightly farther away from Rack, and Dawn let him, clearly terrified. “I... thought you might need to know her. Because this little chit is under my protection. If anyone should hurt her accidentally...”

   “Then they should know you’ll come after them,” Rack said. “I see.” He turned away and headed back to his book. “Well, I’ll certainly keep folks aware of the new player in town.”

   “She’s no player,” Spike said firmly. “Anyone plays with her, they’re playing with me.”

   Rack looked up. “Well now. That close?”

   Spike said nothing. He said it heavily, and darkly, and with complete conviction. 

   Rack chuckled. “I didn’t think you’d take another after Drusilla failed to come back with you. Rumor had it you played with the Slayer and her crew these days. Wonder what they’ll think of this development? She’s awfully young,” Rack continued. “Young even in form. Bit of a resemblance to your old princess though, isn’t there? Something in the hair…?”

   “She’s mine,” was all Spike said. 

   Rack sighed, annoyed that his taunts were getting him nowhere. “Well. I think I understand you. Was there anything else?”

   “Yeah,” Spike said, his manner changing from dark king to guy-down-the-bar. “You got any work for me?”

   “Spike,” Rack said, his own manner easing. “You know I don’t like to take advantage of you. It’s a real shame about that chip in your skull. If it wasn’t for this little problem of yours–”

   “Any demons need slaughtering, or eggs needed snatching?” Spike said. “You know I’m pretty good at the smash and grab.”

   “You foundering, Spike?”

   “Need a bit of brass,” Spike said. “Owe Teeth a few kittens, and he’s getting itchy.”

   Rack scoffed, amused. “Oh, is that all. In that case, there’s a delivery coming in a few months. A friend of mine will be in town. He needs a place to stash a few things for a week or so. You got a spare corner of your lair?”

   “What kind of things?”

   “I didn’t ask.”

   “Then I wouldn’t know.”

   Rack sighed. “He’s a demon breeder. I think... someone’ll need a spot to lay some eggs. Sell them out of town, wouldn’t be a trouble to you. I’m sure you’d be paid handsomely. More than enough for your kittens.”

   “Na,” Spike said. “Not in my crypt. Family man now, an’ all. Can’t be having my bachelor buddies leave their pups there. They’ll muck up the furniture. Any other leads?”

   Rack seemed to hesitate. “Well. If all you need is cash, I don’t think you’d be interested.”

   “Let me know what it is,” Spike said. “And we’ll see if I’m interested.”

   Rack smiled. “There is something stirring in the underground. As in  _ underground _ ,” he added, gesturing down with his hand. “A few new folks in the mix. Bringers, they call ‘em. Or harbingers.”

   “Harbingers of what, exactly?”

   “Still trying to sort that out,” Rack said. “There’s only a few of them in town, and I’m having real trouble tracking them clean. If you could bring me one of these so I can figure out what’s stirring... I’d be very grateful.”

   “How grateful is that?”

   “Let’s just say I’d talk to Teeth for you myself,” Rack said. “And I don’t think he’d bother you again.”

   Spike regarded him for a long moment. “What’s the catch?”

   “No catch. I want a bringer, I’d like you to bring me a bringer. Nothing more.”

   “What aren’t you saying?”

   “Well. I’m not dead sure these bringers aren’t human. So. It might be beyond your skills these days.”

   That was a dig. “You’d be surprised at my skills,” Spike said. “What do you say I tell you that, first? If they’re just humans, you shouldn’t have any troubles with ‘em, Rack, now, should you?”

   Rack glared.

   “What do they look like?” Spike asked.

   Rack drew two runes on a piece of paper and handed it to Spike. “They have this carved over their eyes,” he said. “They’re not exactly subtle.”

    Spike examined the paper. “Any leads on where to find them?”

   “Underground,” Rack said.

   Spike scoffed. “That narrows it down!”

   “They’re inhospitable, even to demons,” Rack said. “Nothing grows or thrives around them. Wherever their lair is, it’s not part of the old Mayor’s demon-friendly tunnel system. Would that help you?”

   “Not really,” Spike said. “Demon friendly tunnel system has a layer under it, and a layer under that.”

   “That’s your territory, Spike, not mine. Here.” He dropped something on the table. “They carry blades like this.”

   It was a wide, curved blade, which looked wicked deadly. Spike lifted it, and sniffed at it. Then he frowned.

   “Well?”

   “I got it,” Spike said. He set it down with a click.

   “You don’t want to keep that?” Rack asked.

   “No,” Spike said. “I got one of my own.”

   Rack raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”

   Supremely aware as she was, Willow could see it. A moment of understanding passing silently between their eyes. Spike had a lead. One he wasn’t yet willing to share with Rack. Sneaky, sneaky vampire. 

   “Well, let me know if you have any success in this venture. I’ll... have a talk with Teeth. I think we can come to some arrangement there.”

   “‘Preciate it.”

   “And as for your lovely Dusk.”

   Spike’s grip on Dawn tightened.

   “She’s charming.”

   Spike’s eyes narrowed. “I know it.” He took Dawn’s shoulder and led her out the door.

   Only then did Rack finally look up at Willow, frozen and immobile on the ceiling. “What did you think of that, Strawberry? The Big Bad has a Little Bad all his own.”

   The power holding Willow to the ceiling dropped abruptly, and she dropped even faster. She was too twisted into the universe to even protest as she slammed into the floor. Then the high started to fade away, leaving her feeling sick and empty. She needed another hit. She needed…. Oh god, had that been  _ Dawn _ ? No, no, it couldn’t have been. Dawn was dead and was going to be resurrected, no matter what all her jerky, selfish friends thought. She wasn’t a….

   Rack chuckled and knelt beside her. “Of course, you already know them both, don’t you?” He smiled, and Willow flinched as he reached out to brush a lock of hair away from her face. “You want more, don’t you, Strawberry? I’ll make you a deal. Bring the girl to see me some time without her protector, and you’ll get as much as you want, anytime you want.” 

   Willow scrambled woozily to her feet and staggered out into the waiting room. Home. She needed to get home. To tell Buffy what she’d seen. She tried to focus her mind and teleport, but nothing happened other than a horrible, dull ache shivering all through her body. Her magic was tapped out.

   Somehow, she managed to get home. It was dark and quiet. Buffy was either asleep or out on patrol. She’d check Buffy’s room, but first.... She felt both hot and cold, and everything was spinning. She’d used too much of her energy. Too much magic spooled out of her, leaving her so empty. She stumbled up the stairs and into the room she’d once shared with Tara. So big and empty. So lonely. She flopped down on the bed with a whimper.

_ Have to tell Buffy,  _ Willow thought fuzzily.  _ Poor Dawnie. Eaten up by Spike.  _ Sudden realization washed through her. The chip. Oh god, the chip wasn’t working anymore, not if Spike had killed Dawn. Eaten her up and made her his daughter. She scrambled to her feet, intent on finding Buffy, but the movement was too fast. Everything went gray for a moment, then swirly. And then nothing was there as she passed out in a heap on the floor.

 

***

 

   The closing credits for Passions rolled across the screen. Buffy stared at them idly. She’d gotten slightly interested in the show lately. She remembered her mom had liked it, which didn’t hurt. It had also been on in the afternoons at the psych ward, and had been a welcome break there. Buffy tried not to think about the fact that Spike was obsessed with it. She knew he’d be in his crypt right now, watching the show, splayed out on his green chair, looking all relaxed and imperturbable with his daytime soaps. 

   Spike. Relaxed. She tried not to think about how it would feel to climb over him, straddle his lap, pour her lips into his, feel the strength of his hands on her upper arms, the taste of his demanding and generous kisses sending shockwaves through her... and she was clearly failing in this trying-not-to-think endeavor, because there was no way her fantasy had gotten this involved without her thinking about it.

   “Buffy. Have you heard a word I’ve said?” Giles asked.

   “You could have waited until the show was over,” Buffy said. She turned off the television. “You’re heading back to England.”

   “I thought it best, Buffy. You seem to be doing better now, and there’s really nothing more I can do for you here. I’ve purchased a ticket. I should be leaving in a week.”

   Buffy wanted to feel betrayed, but she couldn’t. “Couldn’t even wait for the turkey to get old?” Thanksgiving had been a few days before. It had been kind of pathetic, just Willow and Giles and Xander and Anya. No Mom. No Tara. No Dawn.... And no Spike, who had been a surprisingly jovial Thanksgiving companion in the past, now that Buffy thought about it. But she hadn’t dared invite Spike. She’d been far too afraid of where an evening with a big sleepy-inducing meal and some glasses of wine would go if Spike was in the house with her. Like... into her bedroom, maybe. With no cameras and no nurses and no  _ such a thing is inappropriate _ ... 

   She couldn’t trust herself.

_   Do you dare trust Spike? _ Of course, she  _ had _ been trusting Spike. Which was why she couldn’t trust herself....

   “I... intentionally waited to tell you until after your holiday,” Giles said.

   Buffy nodded. There were all kinds of things she wanted to say to Giles, but she didn’t have the energy for any of them. She was better... but not all better. And she wasn’t ready to unpack everything she felt and thought about Giles leaving. At this point, all she could do was accept the fact of it, and get back to life.

   Giles went back to the Magic Box, and Buffy lay down on the couch, still sleepy. She was still in her pajamas. There wasn’t any reason to brush her hair or dress or... eat. No Dawn to get to school in the mornings. Buffy thought she might put on sweats or some overalls later and do a quick patrol, stake out any graves she knew from the obituaries were suspicious, but otherwise she wasn’t doing much. Giles had fortunately paid off the worst of the bills, and feeding only herself she could coast for a few months. She intended to use that coasting time to figure out exactly what to do.

   She was considering selling the house. Without Dawn, there was no real reason to keep it. Willow would have to move back to the dorms, but Buffy wasn’t sure she wanted to keep feeding her on her dime, anyway. Willow had been acting very strange since Tara left.

   The phone rang. Buffy let the machine pick it up, and Tara’s voice wafted over, tinny and distant. “Um, hi, Buffy? I wanted to tell you, I think you should go talk to Spike. He really wants to talk with you about something important, and I-I think you should listen to him. Please hear him out before you make any snap judgements, okay? It’s important.”

   Important, like finding yourself speechless and breathless with your panties soaked in a hospital bathroom... that kind of important? Unfortunately, that kind of thought was... kinda relaxing....

   Buffy opened her eyes some hours later to see Willow staggering down the stairs. She was still in the clothes she’d gone out in the night before, her hair tangled, her face pale under her smeared makeup. She gasped when she saw Buffy, took a few lunging steps, and landed on her knees before the couch.

   “Willow... are you sick?”

   “I’m fine,” Willow said. “Spike’s got Dawn.”

   Buffy wasn’t sure she’d heard that right. “Excuse me?”

   “Spike. I saw him last night, with another vampire on his arm. It’s Dawn, Buffy. She’s been turned, Spike did it, Spike’s got Dawn.”

   Buffy didn’t care that Willow sounded stoned, her voice slow and slurred. She didn’t care that she’d gotten this news and then apparently spent at least twelve hours passed out in her room rather than wake Buffy and tell her. She didn’t even care that Willow’s eyes weren’t entirely her natural hazel, and instead some kind of sickly greyish black that seemed to move like hot mud. She heard the witch, and she believed her, and she paused only long enough to grab a jean jacket and a stake before she was out the door, running like a juggernaut to Spike’s crypt.

 

 


	18. Killer

 

 

   “So these are arteries,” Dawn said, examining the chart. “And these, these ones are veins?”

   “That’s right,” Spike said. After Teeth’s attack, Spike had decided he had to teach Dawn how to kill. It bothered him that he had to do it so soon, but if something  _ did _ happen to him, he didn’t want Dawn to be caught with her pants down. He’d gotten a college anatomy textbook and a handful of medical charts. He knew even if he couldn’t easily get Dawn to focus on her geometry,  _ this _ would grab her attention. 

   “If you’re going for the kill, you go for an artery. That’ll get your prey dead extremely fast. Downside is, you might not be able to swallow all the blood that quickly.”

   “Will any artery do this?”

   “To varying degrees,” Spike said. “I was getting the one in your wrist when I sired you. There are some that are easier to get to than others. The wrist, that’s here. That’s the radial artery, that’s the one you really want to get, goes all the way up the arm to the brachial, and the median here under–”

   “What about the neck?”

   “Yeah, the neck is what’s going to call to you. There are scent glands in the neck, to release hormones. That’s why they’re so much fun to kiss even as a human.” Spike pointed at the chart. “This is the carotid. Internal going up to external, you see how it goes up the side of the head? It’s kind of deep, though, and you’ll have to decide if what you want is oxygenated or not. Vampires have different preferences. I’m actually rare, I like it from the veins more than the arteries, but Drusilla was  _ all _ about the heart’s blood. She liked her blood so red it was almost pink.”

   “You mean black.”

   “Nope. Dark blood is older, arterial blood looks just about neon.” 

   “Is there a real difference?”

   “Course there is. You didn’t notice?”

   “In what, the jar vs. the plastic bag?”

   “When I got that dog for you? What do you think that was, bit, playtime? How long did it take you to kill it?”

   “I don’t know. Ten minutes?”

   “It was twenty, at least, and the thing fought you. I let you do it wrong so you could see what that’ll cost you. If you ever need to feed, pet, you might not have time to do it safely and with leisure, and you sure might not have time to play games. An artery will kill your prey quickly, usually under ten minutes. A vein, that goes slower. The question is, do you want to make it gentle or not. If you’re going for an artery, there’s almost no way to make it gentle, because the blood’s going the wrong way. All you’re going to get is pain.”

   “What do you mean by gentle?”

   “Gentle. You know, gentle.” At her blank look he added, “Like a sucker.”

   “What’s a sucker?”

   Spike looked at Dawn curiously. “Buffy never told you?”

   “Told me what?”

   Spike opened his mouth to tell Dawn about Riley and his predilections for creatures of the night re: late-night suck jobs from those useless trulls in the suck house, but decided against it. If Buffy hadn’t told Dawn about Riley, it wasn’t his place to. Not yet, anyway. He sat down, because this was a little complicated. 

   “Okay, you’re a little young for this, but here’s something you need to know. There’s something in your bite, in your saliva. Some call it venom, but... real venom comes from a venom sack, and we don’t have that. Anyway, when you bite a person, a human, you can use a lot of saliva and get it into their bloodstream, and they’ll get... well. Kinda sleepy, and they’ll really want to be close to you.”

   Dawn frowned. “Why?”

   Spike shrugged. “I don’t know, niblet, never had it analyzed or anything. I think it makes them feel like they’re in love. Stimulates oxytocin or some rubbish. The practical upshot of it is, if what you want to do is feed slow, or keep the prey from screaming, or feed in public, you’re better off giving a lot back. Give back as much as you’re sucking, if not more.”

   “How do you do that?”

   “Well, you just kinda hold back your tongue, and get as much saliva in your mouth as you can.” He demonstrated, holding a little bit of spit out on the end of his tongue before pulling it back in. “But if you’re going to go that route, in public, you have to go with a vein, not an artery, so the venom or whatever goes into their bloodstream and up to their brain before it gets back down to you.”

   “So you can feed in public? Doesn’t the bite hurt them?”

   “A bit, but there’s a local anesthetic kinda thing, too. It’ll make the area around the wound feel numb. Also has a bit of an anticoagulant, so the blood’ll keep flowing until they’re dead, and it speeds up the heart rate. You get to eat faster. Here’s another thing,” he added. “If you don’t want to kill them yet, if what you want to do is play, you’re going to want to avoid  _ all _ of these.” He tapped the chart. “Or at least the major ones. And you don’t want to screw up when all you wanted was a snack.”

   “So what’s a sucker?”

   “Someone who does that a lot,” he said. “A sucker is a vampire who will exchange the bite hit for money.”

   “There’s people who want to get bitten?”

   “The venom hit can be quite the rush, little bit. Some humans get hooked on it. There’s a lot of suck houses in L.A.”

   Dawn leaned back in her chair. “You’re telling me there are vampires who  _ do _ eat human, but don’t kill.”

   “Yeah.”

   “So why don’t you do that?”

   “Huh?”

   “How come you’re not a sucker? I mean, couldn’t you ask one of these... these humans who like to get bit to cut themselves, and then just feed as much as you wanted? Even with the chip?”    

   “I’d rather dust,” Spike said. “Now, look at this chart. Where’s the carotid?”

   “Here,” Dawn said, pointing to the jugular. “Why would you rather dust?”

   “Who do you think I want inside me?” Spike said. “Humans aren’t just blood, they’re _ people. _ There are those I don’t want to carry around with me forever. I’ll kill anyone you put in front of me, but I’m picky about my blood.”

   “But you’ll drink  _ goat _ ,” Dawn scoffed.

   “And that goat died for the privilege,” Spike said. “Look, I’m not gonna say I’ve never done it, but I’ve sure as hell never done it for money, and most of those people I kept alive as playthings I killed eventually. Just because I’m chipped up doesn’t mean I’m gonna sell myself as a sucker. The blood is one thing, the kill is something else, and actually getting enough to eat is something completely different. And you’re doing a wonderful job of avoiding your homework.  _ That _ is the carotid.  _ This _ is the internal jugular. My favorite vein, by the way. Take this notebook.” Spike drew a rough humanoid head and neck and shoved the notebook at Dawn. “Draw in veins and arteries of the neck and face, and label them. I want both internal and external jugular, the carotid, labeling all the parts from the common to the facial veins, and don’t forget the vertebral artery!”

   Dawn sighed. “Couldn’t we just keep biting till it spurts?”

   Spike tried really, really hard not to laugh. He couldn’t quite keep the grin off his face. “Not unless you want to waste ten years of your fledge life learning something you could learn from this chart in a week. Besides, once you’ve learned the throat I’ll teach you about the subclavian.” He put his tongue behind his teeth and twitched his eyebrow. “That’s a sweet spot.”

   Dawn shivered in anticipation. Then she sighed. “Not that I’m ever gonna know about it at this rate. What’s it gonna matter if I’m not allowed to kill humans?”

   “I don’t know what your unlife is gonna be, niblet,” he said. “Sunnydale’s a volatile place. I’m hoping you’ll be able to live safe in this crypt, pick up your blood from the butcher, and come home to watch Nightmare Before Christmas on video. That’s what I  _ hope _ your unlife’s gonna be. But there’s nasty folks out there, government sickos, humanoid demons with the same vein pattern, slayers who aren’t your big sis and won’t have any reason to leave you movin’ about. I need you to know how to kill, and how to feed, even if I’m hoping you’ll never use it.”

   Dawn stared at him. “Are you really hoping I’ll never kill?”

   “Don’t kill!” Spike snapped, exerting his dominance.

   “I’m not gonna! I just mean... never?”

   Spike stared at her for a long moment, and then sighed. “It’s hard to explain, bit. Part of me thinks it’d be a treat to take you out on the town right now, and get your first victim under your belt. But there’s lots of reasons why not.”

   “Like what?”

   Spike didn’t have time to think before he realized the biggest reason why not was racing up to the crypt door, panting. He could hear her breath, smell her from under the door, pretty much  _ feel _ her as she raced toward him… and that smell was not lust. “Oh, bugger!” He stood up and shunted the anatomy chart behind the TV. “Hide, bit.”

   “What?”

   “Just  _ hide! _ ” He shoved Dawn toward the lower level so fast she actually fell, catching her chin on the concrete as she dropped.

   The door opened, because Buffy had kicked it open, and Spike stood as nonchalantly as he could between her and the opening to the lower level. “Hey, there, slayer. The eggs and sausage buffet is–”

   Buffy had already hit him before he’d gotten his banter coat on properly. “Where is she?”

   “Who?”

   Buffy hit him again. “Where is  _ Dawn _ ?”

   “Don’t know what you’re talking about, slayer,” he said, grasping at straws. “You think I’m hiding someone? There’s a whole – whole network of sewers here in Sunnydale.” He hoped Dawn was listening and would take the hint,  _ run, run, get the hell out, bit! _ “What makes you think anyone’s hiding here in my crypt?”

   Buffy hit Spike again, then again, then again, and Spike closed his eyes and just let it happen, because every second that Buffy spent hitting him was not a second she was going after the niblet, and yeah, it hurt, but it was the slayer, and he was just fine with getting hurt by the slayer. There were times this last summer he would have given his right arm just to be hit by the slayer one more beautiful time.

   But someone else had other ideas about that.

   “No!” Dawn shouted. “Get off him!”

_   No! _

   Dawn tackled Buffy, throwing the slayer halfway across the room, and they were rolling, fighting. Dawn was vamped out, Buffy’s adrenaline was high, and Spike knew from the incipient bruises on his face that she was already on her game. There was no warming up for this fight, not like there usually was with the slayer. She hadn’t come here to fight, she had come here to slay.

   He dove into the fray without care for his chip, wrestling in between the slayer and his niblet, and kicked Buffy off her. “Run!” he barked to Dawn.

   “I’m not leaving you!”

   Spike would have rolled his eyes if he’d had time. He didn’t have time. He stood between Buffy and Dawn and sure enough, Buffy came at them again, stake still in hand. Spike tried to go for it like he had with Tara, but Tara was just a witch, this was  _ The Slayer _ . She dodged the move, slid up under him, and  _ bloody hell _ she’d nearly gotten him that time. 

“Get back!” he yelled over his shoulder, and Dawn finally bloody listened, though he’d have given his teeth for her to run. Damned minion instinct, why couldn’t it have gone with the  _ obey _ line rather than the  _ die for you _ line just now?

   He couldn’t hit Buffy, god damn bloody  _ fucking _ chip, so he grabbed at her wrists, expecting the damn thing to go off any second, but it didn’t, so he wrestled his strength against her, and the chip still didn’t go off, but she was winning, dammit, she was stronger than he was, and he knew it. He tried to dance the grapple off, twisting her until they ran up against his sarcophagus, and then he twisted her arm to hit her wrist against the stone, making her lose her grip on her stake. He expected the chip to go off as he did that – it didn’t – so he pushed against her again, and by now even Buffy had realized something was a little off. Spike hadn’t yet clutched at his head, abandoning the fight to go  _ Arrgh _ !

   Still, not one to look a gift horse in the mouth when it might mean he’d get a chance to explain Dawn, Spike still wrestled with the slayer, forcing her half over the sarcophagus, and then down to the concrete floor where... this looked remarkably familiar. He’d had a slayer on the ground like this once before. And as before, the tables turned quickly, as Buffy grabbed his wrists, threw him over her head, and slammed him into the floor. He didn’t let her let him go, though, so in throwing him over, she sort of dragged herself on top of him, and Spike lay there with the slayer straddled over him, breathing hard, terrified for himself and for Dawn, and... yeah, hard as a rock. Which she probably knew all about, ‘cause she was sitting on it.

   “Spiiike?” Dawn said from her place against the wall.

   “What. Have. You.  _ Done _ ?” Buffy hissed down into his face.

   “I can explain.”

   “Spiiiike,” Dawn whimpered.

   “It’s all right, niblet,” Spike called from his position under Buffy. He realized he was probably lying through his teeth. “I’m gonna be fine. Your big sis is gonna give us a chance to explain, isn’t she.” The look on Buffy’s face led him to believe she was not in a listening mood. The only reason he wasn’t dust right now was because he’d made her lose her stake. Her eyes were shooting emerald sparks of rage, and her breath came hard and fast and her hands on his wrists were hard and heavy as rocks, and he couldn’t help but cord under her, flexing his strength, feeling her weight against his cock,  _ god _ this was not the time, but bloody  _ fuck _ this was hot!

   “Save it,” Buffy growled, and her heated voice was enough to send a lightning bolt through his chest and down into his groin. He almost groaned.

   “Spike, I really want to kill her,” Dawn said, and her voice sounded traumatized. “Like,  _ a lot! _ ”

   And suddenly how gorgeous Buffy was and how hot it felt to be under her strength like this and the scent of her and his need for her, none of that mattered, because his niblet was confused, and struggling. Spike rolled Buffy off him with a burst of sudden strength and almost forgot about her. He turned his back – a deadly mistake if he’d cared – ran to the niblet and took hold of her shoulders, staring into her eyes. 

    “Lock it down,” he said. “Lock it down, it’s okay. It’s okay, you can control it.”

   Dawn looked terrified beneath her vamped forehead. “But it’s not the blood! I just really want to kill her! I  _ want _ it! I–!”

   “I know,” he said. “I know, it’s gonna twist you up, just look at me. Look at me, I got you. I got you, okay? Hey. Hey, look at me, little bit, who am I?”

   “Spike.”

   “Yeah, that’s right, I’m Spike. I’m Spike, and I got you, right? You can do this. You can do this.”

   “Why?” she whispered. “What is this? Why? I was around Rack and in the street, I was even around Tara, and I didn’t want to kill this badly, not at all! What’s going on?”

   “It’s ‘cause you love her, little bit,” Spike said. He touched the tears from the corners of her yellow eyes and brushed her hair out of her face. “It’s all ‘cause of the love. It’s the vampire. We always want to kill the things we love.”

   Dawn swallowed. “But I don’t want to kill  _ you _ .”

   Spike smiled. “Well, I’m already dead, aren’t I?” He kissed Dawn’s forehead and let her fall into him, and then he turned to Buffy. Buffy was standing… just standing. She’d watched his exchange with Dawn with an expression even he couldn’t read, and he’d worked like hell to learn Buffy’s face. He swallowed. All he could do was keep on. “She hasn’t killed anyone. I saw to it. Well, a couple vampires and a dog, but I’ve kept her off humans. I swear it.”

   “You expect me to believe that?”

   “It’s the truth.”

   Buffy stared at him. “Why would you do that? You’re evil, you don’t have a soul, why would you keep her from killing?”

   Spike was actually insulted. “‘Cause you wouldn’t like it, pet.”

   Dawn was trembling. He looked back down at her, but she’d calmed down a bit. She was back at resting face. He gazed into her blue eyes. “Hey, there, bit. You doing any better?”

   “I’m confused.”

   He kissed her forehead again. “I know it. Come on.” He took her by the shoulders and turned her, presenting her to Buffy. “Buffy. I’d like to introduce you to my daughter. Dawn, Buffy. Buffy?”

   Buffy punched him in the nose, and he shut up.

 

 


	19. Slayer

 

 

   “He  _ is _ my sire, but he didn’t kill me,” Dawn said, since Buffy had demanded it from her own mouth after Spike’s admittedly sheepish explanation. “And you sound like Tara. She went through all these questions with me, too.”

   “Tara knows?” Buffy’s voice was shrill, and she tried to yank it back down, but she couldn’t. “How long has Tara known?”

   “A few weeks,” Spike said. “She came to check on me while you were still in hospital. She’s been getting me Dawn’s school work.”

   Buffy wasn’t sure she could take this. Vampire Dawn she’d been prepared for, almost half expecting when that damning report had been delivered by Giles.  _ Missing, presumed dead.  _ What with Janice’s body and Dawn’s... Dawn’s... she gulped. The idea horrified her. “So you and Tara and everyone has been keeping this from me, since the night it happened?”

   “I came to _ tell  _ you the night it happened,” Spike said. “You were a little preoccupied, pet!”

   Buffy instinctively pulled down her sleeves, even though she knew they were long enough to cover the already fading scars. Slayer healing was doing a good job in covering her little folly, but the scars were healing red now, and very obvious. As far as she knew, compared to the other marks of a slayer’s life, they would eventually turn white, and then fade, and then within a year probably go away completely. Even the mark on her neck from Angel was gone now, unless she looked very closely. Of course, if she wasn’t a slayer, they’d be a sign of her misery and depression for the rest of her life...

   Somehow, she didn’t want Dawn to see them. They’d make her feel guilty...

   But that was ridiculous! She was a vampire, she  _ couldn’t _ feel guilty, she was a soulless, heartless thing!

   And she had the shape of her sister.

   “What about all the other nights since then? Like, all the times you came to see me? It didn’t occur to you to mention, oh, by the way, your vampire sister is living in my crypt?”

   Spike’s teeth were clenched as he answered, “Well, you weren’t very keen on talking, were you.”

   Buffy opened her mouth and then closed it again. 

   “It was delicate thing, Buffy, and you were... “ he glanced at Dawn. “Look, can we do this away from the niblet?”

   “No,” Buffy said. “I don’t trust her out of my sight. We can do this right here.”

   Spike took in a breath. “Every time I tried to bring it up, you distracted me. Rather thoroughly, as I recall.”

  “Oh, please! You could have told me.”

  “When? The first day I visited, when you told me you didn’t want to hear it? Or the second time, when you wanted me to just let you talk? Or how about the third time when you flat out stopped me by sticking your–”

   “You had your chances!” Buffy said, blushing, and hoping to god Dawn didn’t know what he was about to say. She was shaking with fury or… or something. “You had your chances, and you lied to me.”

   “I didn’t,” Spike said. “At worst I wasn’t aggressive enough about getting a word in edgewise, slayer. I tried to tell you every damn time I saw you. And every time I  _ didn’t _ say it, it made it harder the next time, and you  _ really _ didn’t seem all that interested in talking. Ever. I made special visits at high bloody noon to maybe catch you at a time when you wanted to talk! I’ve been wanting to tell you since you got…” he glanced at Dawn. “Since you’ve been feeling better, but you’ve been avoiding me.”

   Buffy was startled. Dawn didn’t know she’d been in the mental ward? Had he kept the whole ugly scenario from her? 

   “Why is that?” he asked. 

   “I just… I didn’t want to deal with you,” she said, looking away. “And I don’t buy it. You just thought you were gonna get in trouble.”

   “That’s not true,” Spike said. “I didn’t do anything wrong here. She was already dead and turned, I did what I could to keep her from killing anyone. I think I’ve been the good guy here. And you know, you’re being right petty about it!”

   “You’ve been keeping an unchipped vampire in your crypt for weeks!” Buffy cried out. “How the hell am I supposed to believe you weren’t sending her out to kill for you?”

   “He wasn’t,” Dawn said. “I wish he was, pig blood is fucking boring.”

   “Mind your mouth, young lady,” Buffy said automatically.

   “I can say what I like. You’re not the boss of me.”

   “Listen to your sister.”

   “Sorry.”

   “Spike, this isn’t like a stray cat. This is my sister!”

   “And Spike’s my sire!”

   “Oh, no,” Buffy said, realizing where this was going. There was something awfully familiar about the way Spike stood by Dawn, something about the way he kept his hand on her. She’d seen Spike with a brown-haired vampire maiden before, and she didn’t like it. “I don’t trust you two together, just the one of you is bad enough!” 

   Dawn would have paled, if she wasn’t pale already. Buffy knew that horrified look. “You can’t take me from here!”

   “I can if I think it’s what’s best for you.”

   “I wanna stay with Spike!”

   “It’s more complicated than that, pet.” Spike gestured to Dawn. “I’m stronger, she’ll listen to me. I don’t know if you’ve dealt much with newborns.”

   “Dealing with a newborn! Spike…!” She rounded on him, and saw she was so too late. She’d seen that look before. When he’d first declared his love for her. Desperation. He was begging her, it was in every line of his face. Her voice lowered. “Oh, god, Spike. Why didn’t you dust her?”

   Spike stared at her. “Could you?”

   Buffy paused, staring at Dawn’s face. “It’s not Dawn, Spike.”

   “Could you?” he asked again. He picked up the stake on the floor and pressed it into Buffy’s hand. Dawn looked terrified, but she stood her ground. She… trusted…. 

   She trusted Spike.

   “Come on,” Spike said. “Could you? Look at her. She’s not killed anyone. She’s not gonna kill anyone.”

   Dawn looked annoyed. “Spike–”

   “You’re not gonna! Are you?”

   “No, sir,” Dawn said glumly.

   Spike turned back to Buffy. “Can you really just up and do it?”

   Buffy looked at the stake in her hand. She’d planned on doing it. She had the whole grim scenario sketched out in her head. Finding Dawn (or maybe Dawn finding her, trying to hunt her down and kill her, because if Angel had, then Dawn would) assessing the threat level, taking out whatever associates she had in her pack, pushing her down, holding her with her foot, saying I’m sorry before the stake came down. Or maybe Dawn would be chagrined, and try to lie to her, pretend she wasn’t evil, and Buffy would have to go through the whole prevarication and listen to her lies, or tell her to close her eyes and tell her she loved her, like Angel, again....

   But that wasn’t what happened. She hadn’t found a murderous demon, she’d found a frightened little girl who Spike claimed as his daughter, who admitted she was evil but was glumly accepting the realities of a world where killing was frowned upon....

   If she was going to have to deal with a vampire Dawn, this wasn’t what she’d expected.

   “Look. She sees me as her sire. I caught her still newborn, there  _ is _ a blood bond there, I can feel it. Ask around, talk to other vamps, there’s a... a thing.” He seemed reluctant to talk about it in front of Dawn. He kept glancing at her, as if really wishing she were elsewhere. “A thing about sires and fledges, okay, a kind of a... physical bond that’s...”

   “Oh,  _ gross _ , Spike! Are you telling me you’ve been getting it on with my dead sister?”

   “Huh? No!” Spike winced. “No, god! No. It’s not like that.”

   “I kinda wish it was,” Dawn muttered, and Spike smacked her. Pretty hard, from what Buffy could see.

   “Hey!” Buffy said, her protective instincts jumping forward, and she almost got between the two of them. That was dumb. 

   “He doesn’t fuck me, if that’s what you’re disgusted by,” Dawn said, sounding just as irritated as Spike.

   “That wasn’t what I meant,” Spike said darkly. “I just meant there’s something about who’s dominant and all, all right? Just trust me, she’ll listen to me. For a good long while, she’s gonna listen. I can keep her from killing, I swear it.”

   Buffy felt incredibly tired. “I can’t deal with this.”

   “Then let me,” Spike said. “Please, come on. That’s what I’ve been doing, I can handle this, please. Don’t take her out until you get to know her, I swear....”

   He kept talking. It was like when he’d chased her to her house after the chaining up incident, just unable to stop pleading his case. Buffy couldn’t even hear him anymore. The run to the crypt, the fight with Spike which had been... much more difficult than she’d have thought it would be. He’d gotten very good at working around that chip while she was dead. 

   With the traumatic story of Dawn’s death, and her subsequent resiring, not to mention the grief and the nightmares and the general confusion of being back in the real world, Buffy just wanted to curl up into a little ball, and let someone pet her hair and tell her it was all going to be all right. Except not someone who had ripped her out of heaven, and not someone evil and dead and dangerous, and not someone she didn’t know or care about at all. That pretty much left Giles, and he wasn’t that type. She missed her mother, now, something terrible. What would Mom have done in this situation?

   Well... what  _ had _ Mom done? She’d given Spike hot cocoa and joked about Greek Amphorae. She’d said that Dawn was theirs, even when she’d known she hadn’t been born to them. She’d been a bit wigged out at first... well, and at second, really, but eventually she’d just accepted that Buffy was a slayer, and that that meant vampires and demons and witches and all around weirdness was just going to be part of their lives from then on.

_   Mom would let her live, _ Buffy realized. Hell, Mom wouldn’t just let her live, she’d probably bring Dawn right back into the house and set her up with night school classes.

_ Mom was an idiot sometimes, _ said the logical part of her. But... here. Here could work. If Spike meant what he said, and really meant to keep her from killing. If it was any other newborn he’d taken on but Dawn Buffy wouldn’t hesitate to dust them, but this... this  _ had _ been Dawn. And yeah, it wasn’t Dawn now. But... Buffy looked over. Those were Dawnie’s blue eyes.

   She’d been dreading turning Dawn’s body into dust. Spike... she turned to look at him. He was still expounding, probably eloquently, pleading for his fledgling’s life. She had seen that look on his face before. When he was talking about Drusilla. When he’d been talking... to her.

   Spike didn’t have a soul. So he couldn’t love, she knew that. (God, she knew that. She had to keep telling herself she knew that.) But he really seemed to think he could, and he really seemed to love this little demonic Dawn, and really... the worst case scenario that Buffy had been playing over and over in her head? Spike seemed to have circumvented that.

   Except, he hadn’t told her. She was pissed off about that.

   “Fine,” she said.

   “What?”

   Buffy grabbed Spike, tossed him against the pillar in the center of the room, and held him there, glaring into his face. “But don’t you ever lie to me again!” She lifted the stake in her hand and shoved it into his chest.

   For a terrified moment Spike stared at her, breathing hard, but Buffy knew how deep a heart was, and she’d had her hand low on the stake. With the tip of the wood mere millimeters from his heart, his chest met her fist, and the wood stopped. For a long, heated moment they stood there, glaring into each other’s faces, Spike terrified, Buffy... she didn’t know what she was feeling. Her heart was racing and Spike’s breath in her face smelled extremely fragrant and she wanted to... she wanted to....

   “If she kills,” Buffy said low. “You die. Is that clear?”

   “Crystal, slayer.”

   Another wave of exhaustion washed over Buffy. “Fine,” she said. “Did you hear that, Dawn? No mess ups, no testing, no checking to see if I mean it. You want your sire to live, you don’t kill! You hear me?”

   “I do,” Dawn said nervously.

   That would have to do. Buffy snatched the stake out of Spike’s chest and shoved it into her pocket. Spike sagged, and Dawn ran to catch him. 

Buffy felt an unexpected pang of jealousy as she left the crypt, watching the two of them. She just wasn’t sure who she was jealous of. It was just... she didn’t have a father anymore, and she didn’t have Dawn anymore, and she didn’t have... well. She didn’t  _ want _ Spike. Despite all those smoochies and the snuggles and the erotic hair-washing and those god damned stupid dreams she’d been having for years. No. She didn’t want Spike. She couldn’t want Spike. So she couldn’t be jealous of that.

   Stupid psyche.

 

***

   Dawn was terrified until Buffy left, and she was still terrified after, but she also kinda wished Buffy had stayed. “You okay?” she asked, trying to hold Spike up. He was shaking and bleeding, and his sire blood was all over her hand, and she felt like she wanted to cry. “God, Spike, I’m sorry. What a bitch. You should have let me kill her. I wanted... I... god. It’s like... not-fair-confusing having her for a sister! I thought it was weird when I was human! It’s even worse now. Are you gonna be all right? I’ve got you.”

   “No,” Spike said, and looked up at her, and to Dawn’s shock, he was grinning. “I’ve got you!” He caught her up and lifted her above his head, forgetting his wound and his bruises, with a look on his face of pure joy. She realized the shaking she’d been feeling before was... was  _ laughter _ .

   “I got you, I got you!” He kissed Dawn’s face, both cheeks, and her forehead, fast, joyous little pecks, as if her were tasting her, then he spun her around and made a kind of a war whoop noise, and then set her lightly on her feet and danced to the wall where he’d hung up his coat. “I got you!”

   “Well, yeah,” Dawn said. “No thanks to her. She nearly fucking staked you. I’d been hoping for... I don’t know. She could have been nicer.”

   “Then she wouldn’t be the slayer, would she,” Spike said. He grabbed her hand and pulled her into a hug. “That went a hundred times better than I thought it was gonna go, niblet. All three of us walked away. We walked away! I get to keep you!”

   Spike’s joy was starting to become infectious, despite Dawn’s irritation and misgivings. “And that’s a good thing?”

   “That’s a good thing? That’s a great thing! I got Dawnie,” he sang, to the tune of “I got Annie” from the musical. “I got Dawnie, yeah!” He spun her in a broadway side step and grinned. “Come on, let’s go out.”

   “No more anatomy charts?”

   “Bugger the charts, let’s rent a movie. And I’ll bet Clem’ll get me some kittens. You ever had a kitten, little bit? They’re delicious. A basket of kittens, and a musical. Hey, you ever seen The Wiz?”

   “Um... no.”

   “I can fix that. Come on! Race you to the cemetery gate!”

   “But... your chest... the stake!”

   “Eh, she only nicked me, what’s that matter when I got Dawnie!” He made another war whoop and started to run. “I got Dawnie!”

   “Hey! Wait up, old man!” Dawn shouted.

   The two vampires raced across the darkened cemetery in search of fresh kitten blood and a little musical entertainment. Together. 

 

 


	20. Fiancée

 

“So Tara’s in a major snit about me using magic, and I thought that was just... I don’t understand it. But now Buffy and Giles are both dead set against me ensouling Dawn. And, I mean, that one’s  _ easy _ . Ensouling Angel was the first big spell I ever did. They must know I can do it.”

   “I don’t really think they doubt you can do it, Willow,” Xander said. “But, I mean... it’s kind of complicated, right? I mean, we worked to ensoul Angel because he was kind of in the killing-people-and-trying-to-end-the-world mode, and... I don’t think this vampire Dawn is doing that.”

   “Yeah, but first they’re against me resurrecting her, and yeah, that was gonna be a real pain, ‘cause we had no body, but now that it’s all  _ easy _ with demonic energies even adding to the animation matrix, Giles is still being all ‘oh, let’s not risk disrupting the dimensional flow.’ Like I can’t contain the dimensional flow!”

Xander sighed and rubbed his face, exhausted. He’d been sitting on his couch listening to Willow complain for about twenty minutes. It felt like longer than that, and honestly, he was kind of leaning towards the others being right. Not that he could actually  _ say _ that to Willow or anything. He’d never been a big fan of purposely upsetting her. And even if that hadn’t been an issue, she didn’t seem all that interested in actually listening lately. Hence the complain-a-thon he was listening to now. 

   It had been only eighteen hours since Buffy’s emergency Scooby meeting where they’d all been told that Dawn was a vampire. She was shut away in Spike’s crypt, hiding from her namesake. They only had the word of the two evil, soulless creatures that she hadn’t killed any human beings. Yet. Buffy had decided, for the time being, to leave them to it, something Xander wasn’t entirely comfortable with. But then… time was always a good ingredient to add. He was willing to give Buffy the time she needed to make a decent decision. 

Willow apparently wasn’t. She wanted to get going  _ right now _ on some kind of spell to fix  _ all the things _ and… it was really starting to weigh on him how she’d decided he was the one to bitch to about it. He was still getting used to the idea that a demonic Dawn existed at all. He really just wanted to sit around for a while, not thinking about any of this, while he crammed junk food into his face. Willow, though? Her preferred coping mechanism seemed to be trying to use magic to twist the shape of things to suit whatever vision of the world she thought it should be.

   “If Buffy’s against it,” he tried. “I mean, she  _ is _ her guardian, right?”

   “But I know how to do this! And god, we just let Spike get away with this? He lied to us, Xander!”

   Actually, Xander hadn’t seen Spike at all since the night of Buffy’s... accident (he’d been making himself call it an accident) and neither had Willow, so Spike actually hadn’t had a chance to lie to either of them.

  “I mean, I saw him at Rack’s, and it was so clear, that guy is still afraid of Spike. Chip or not, that vampire has  _ power _ , power we never realized! Or, no, I mean, we  _ realized _ it, I mean, but you remember what he was like when he first came to Sunnydale? I mean minions and plots and plans and he just took over for The Master like  _ that _ ?” She snapped her fingers. “Well, I get it now, even with the chip, he still has all that. Not over people, but over the other demons? Over the vampires? There’s no reason he’s not running around being all The Master again. I mean, yeah, maybe when he first got the chip he hadn’t figured it all out yet, but now? It’s like we all forgot how  _ evil _ Spike was!”

  “I remembered he was evil, Willow.”

  “Yeah, but the power of it! We’ve just been palling around with him like he was a big joke, and he’s  _ not _ Xander, he’s  _ not! _ And now he’s got Dawnie, and...” 

   Willow was going on now about animation matrices again, and honestly he didn’t understand one word out of three. He hadn’t understood much about the Buffy Resurrection spell, either, which had given him the total wiggins. He hadn’t been warned about live snakes pouring out of his best friend’s mouth. Usually Xander had no real problems with snakes – he’d had a corn snake once, before his father had broken the heat lamp in a drunken sprawl and let the thing die of exposure when Xander was twelve – but that thing that had come out of Willow had just reeked of... wrong. And if  _ he _ could sense it, without a lick of magic to rely on... he shuddered remembering it.

   Willow was actually starting to creep him out, and not just about this. He knew he was supposed to be supportive best friend, though. Smile and nod and claim that everyone else were just a bunch of mean poopyheads. That was how it had been since kindergarten. But they weren’t in kindergarten anymore and things were more complicated.

Everyone knew Willow could do the spell. That wasn’t really the question. It was if she  _ should _ do the spell. And Xander… wasn’t sure about that. Yeah, it’d be great to have Dawn back (Dawn is a vampire…. How can she be a vampire?) but she’d be cursed to never have a moment of perfect happiness. They should just stake her and let her be at peace.

“And it’s just not fair, you know?” Willow said, looking at him expectantly.

He’d kind of lost track of what she’d been saying, but he knew the right response. “Yeah, sure, you’re right. It’s not fair at all.”

And it wasn’t. It wasn’t fair that Buffy had died. It wasn’t fair that she had come back… broken. And it definitely wasn’t fair that Dawn had died and left them all in pieces. But that was life. It wasn’t all flowers and lollipops and fairness. It wasn’t supposed to be.

Xander sighed and glanced up at the clock. Anya would be getting home from the Magic Box at any moment. He’d have to get Willow out of the apartment somehow, because the two of them had been snipping like crazy ever since Tara had walked off. Sometimes Xander wondered if Willow was taking stuff out on  _ his _ girlfriend, because she couldn’t take it out on her own.

   He couldn’t wait to be alone with his cute ruby-lipped-snuggle-kitten. He wanted to distract himself from Willow’s growing obsession with doing more and more complex spells, Buffy’s obvious depression, Giles’s increased drinking, and the sudden appearance of a vampire Dawnster. And for that matter, distract Anya from more talk about the damn wedding. Maybe now that Buffy was out of the hospital, Naughty Nurse would be more appealing.

“Oh, I know!” Willow suddenly bounced in excitement, making the entire couch shake with it. “Xander! We can do the ensouling spell anyway! All I need is two people to help. You and Anya could –”

_ No!  _ “I… I don’t know, Willow. We’re both really busy, with the wedding and everything….” He knew it was a lame excuse even before he saw Willow’s incredulous expression.

   “Are you insane?” she asked.

   “No, I just....”

   “You don’t believe I can do it, either, do you.”

   “I know you can, Willow. I believe in you.”

   Willow’s face got hard. “That’s what you said before I had to jump the gymnastics horse in seventh grade,” she said. “And later you said you thought I shouldn’t have tried it.”

   “Well, yeah, but... I mean. I still believe in you, Will.”

   “What do you really think?” she asked.

   Xander was at a loss. His first thought was that he didn’t want to answer this question, but he knew that would just piss Willow off. “I think... I think that we should... should all sit down – ah,  _ together _ . Maybe even get Spike in on it – and try to sort this out like Scoobies. You know. As a team. Right? All of us together? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be? A team?”

   “You already know what the team is gonna say, three of them already said it!” Willow snapped. “What do  _ you _ think?”

   “I think it... I mean, it’s fine, Willow.”

   “Do you just want to call in the others because they’ll tell me no? Is that it?”

   “No!”

   “Isn’t it?” Willow had her resolve face on, and Xander was kinda spooked by it, because he wasn’t sure exactly what she was resolved about. And then her eyes flashed, and went sort of cloudy, and a spark leaped off her hand like she’d been scuffing her feet on carpet, and her hair moved, just a quick wave, and suddenly she was droning something at him. “Blessed Veritas, goddess of sooth, grant his tongue the hidden truth.”

A seriously wiggy sensation tingled through Xander before centering on his tongue, feeling almost like he’d burned it on a too-hot sip of coffee. Then it was gone. He coughed, sputtering, and stared at her. “Did you just... wait, you just cast a spell on me.”

   “Now you’ll have to tell me the truth,” she said, her face hard.

   “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Xander snapped. “Couldn’t you have just  _ asked  _ me for the truth? You’re supposed to be my best friend, and you don’t even trust me!”

   “You don’t trust  _ me _ !” Willow snapped back, and they were back in second grade again, arguing over the proper adoption procedure of Cabbage Patch Dolls, and everything was normal between them. Except that it wasn’t. Because this was bigger now.

   “Of course I don’t trust you, you lie a lot!” Xander snapped. Willow blinked. Clearly, she hadn’t expected  _ this. _ He opened his mouth to apologize, to take it back even. “You didn’t tell us about snakes, or about the risks of Buffy’s little spell, and I don’t think you even told Tara everything. No wonder she walked out on you! I would have, too!”

   What the hell was he saying? He hadn’t meant to be so blunt, Willow was his best friend. But... it was as if he couldn’t stop, as if he was bound or something, as if... he were her puppet....

   God, it felt like being cursed. He surged to his feet and backed away from her.

   “What have you done to me? Did you just curse me? Take it off!”

   “It’s not a curse, it’s just a charm. I–”

   “Take it off! Take it off!” Xander said. More truths were tickling at the corner of his tongue, and he tried to bite it to keep it down.

   Willow rolled her eyes. “Release,” she said, waving her hand, but Xander could still feel the power curling on his tongue.

   “Oh, god, you’ve messed it up! Just like with Buffy!”

   “I didn’t mess up Buffy!”

   “And the blindness and the scary lights and the demon magnet, you’ve messed it up just like you always do!”

   “Hey! I do not!”

   “ _ TAKE IT OFF! _ ” Xander screamed, afraid any second he’d say something so awful she’d just storm off and leave him like this.

   But his panic was clearly affecting her. She said, “Release,” again, and when that didn’t work, she tried, “ _ Te liberavi _ ,” but clearly it wasn’t working, because Xander still couldn’t stop.

   “Tara’s right. You’re using way too much magic, flinging it around like it’s nothing and using it on people without asking. It’s sick, is what it is. I hate it, it makes me scared of you, and scared of me for wanting to be around you! I’d give my left eye for just one normal friend, instead of demons and witches and creepy killer superheros! God, I miss Jesse. It was so great when he and I could just go off and do guy stuff instead of having to slow down for some nerdy  _ girl _ who thought Doogie Howser was the pinnacle of entertainment!”

   Willow was already hurt, and Xander felt terrible, and he just couldn’t stop.

   “I mean, Buffy was a really poor substitute for a best friend in our little group, particularly when it turned out she wouldn’t even date me. Which would have been fair, since I saved her life and everything, and it would have gotten you off your creepy obsession with me, which, god, you couldn’t have waited to have a crush on me until after I’d started to shave? But I guess once I did I was too manly for you, is that it?”

    “Xander!”

   “And this whole thing with Dawn? Good god, Willow, leave her alone! Wherever her soul is, it’s probably happy. It’s not like Buffy, there’s no hell gates, just death and eternal rest, okay? It’s bad enough that Dawn’s rapidly maturing body’s been possessed by some vampire like the ultimate in demon organ-donation. Just let her be dead! Let us all mourn for once without you sticking your fingers into it!”

Willow stared at him, looking pale and upset, and Xander himself was shaking with the things he was saying. None of them were untrue, but they weren’t things he ever said aloud. They weren’t things he even indulged in his thoughts! When they passed through his mind he dismissed them, and reminded himself what was good and right and important, but... they were still all true. Hidden truth, he realized with sick horror. Willow had specified  _ hidden _ truth.

   Xander tried to find something else he could say, some other truth he could use to soften what he’d just said, maybe something nice he could say which he hadn’t said before? “You have great breasts, though. I’d have loved a threesome with you and Tara before she dumped you.”

   He slammed his hand over his mouth and tried to beg Willow with his eyes to stop this madness before it got any worse!

   Then it got worse. So much worse. The door opened and Anya came in, all blonde haired and happy and holding a bridal magazine.  _ Thank god, _ Xander thought.  _ A distraction! _ He walked over and kissed Anya, partially because he wanted to and partially in the hopes that it would give Willow the time she needed to save him from whatever she’d done with her magic.  _ Welcome home, sweetie,  _ he tried to say.

   “God, I wish you wouldn’t show off your cleavage like that when you’re at work,” was what he actually said. “Those breasts are supposed to be mine. They’re not for your customers to ogle in the hopes they’ll be distracted and spend more money.”

   “Xander?” Anya looked confused. “I-I thought you liked this shirt.”

   “I do like that shirt. When you wear it for me, but–” Xander slapped that hand over his mouth again. Oh, god. Oh, god, the spell wasn’t just for Willow, it was working on Anya too!

   He rounded on Willow, and tried to scream at her to take the damn spell off already.

   “I also really hate what Anya’s done with her hair,” he said, his eyes opening wide. What the hell was he saying? “I mean, she’s not Buffy, and I wish to god she’d stop trying to pretend she was.”

   Anya’s mouth fell open with shock. “Xander?” She grabbed his shoulders. “You look at me when you say things like that!”

_    God, no!  _ Xander thought.  _ I love you, _ he tried to say to Anya.  _ I’m sorry, Willow’s got me under this spell, I don’t mean this! _

   “You’re better with brown hair, it doesn’t look so much like you’re pretending to be my old crush so that you feel more adequate or something. It’s not like any clothes or any hair dye or any crappy attempt at acting normal is ever going to make me forget that you once tried to kill me because bitch queen Cordelia thought she deserved to be my one-true-forever.”

   Anya leaned a little away from him, and the bridal magazine fell from her hand. “I... I... it was my _ job, _ Xander! I go where I’m called! She was loud!”

   “Of course she was loud, she was Cordelia! It doesn’t mean she was right, or righteous, it means she was conceited! If that’s the kind of woman you spent a thousand years reaping vengeance for, it’s a wonder there’s a decent man still out there! How many other innocent men did you disembowel or turn into trolls for the sake of some bitch’s self-righteous snit? And it always creeps me out when you act so proud about it. It’s sick and wrong and I wish to god you’d just pretend you were normal, so I wouldn’t have to make excuses for you all the time.”

   “Xander...”

   “For god’s sake, Willow, get this off me!” he cried out. Willow started fumbling in her pocket, looking for herbs, but the spell still had him, and he found himself turning back to Anya. “Vengeance is evil even on its own, and the ways and whys you did it? What if some of those men were  _ right _ to cheat on those women, huh? Maybe they were having to endure ten thousand little niggly details for wedding parties they don’t even want to have.”

   No. No, not the wedding. Don’t bring up the wedding!

   “You... don’t want a wedding party?”

   “I’m not even sure I want to get married!” Xander cried out, trying to look away, to shut his mouth, to do anything,  _ anything _ other than keep talking. “I mean, look at my parents, it’s not as if their marriage resulted in the ultimate bliss. It resulted in a nagging depressive taking out her frustration on a dedicated alcoholic, bound to each other because they were both too apathetic to imagine a life without each other. Which is where we’re bound to end up, after all. I thought it was romantic and sweet when I proposed, because you kept hinting that you wanted a wedding some day, but good god, I didn’t expect it to become the center of the universe, to the point you try to keep me from eating potato chips to keep fitting in my suit. I’m beggaring myself for this stupid party, which you seem to think is more important than making sure we’re actually  _ happy _ at all.”

   Anya’s hurt was starting to be replaced by anger, and he never  _ ever _ wanted to make that woman angry. He really did know better! And now he was saying that, even! “And now you’re getting pissy, and I’ll bet you wish you could still vengeance me to bits, like you used to do. You still talk like you miss it, like you don’t really like being human, which means at some level, I’m the only thing that keeps you happy here. Which is a lot of pressure to put on a guy, An!”

   “You think you keep me happy?”

   “Well, I know I have to keep working at it, all the time, and you don’t make it easy. I have to keep making excuses for you, because you’re such an embarrassment, and sometimes I just wish you were someone else!” Oh god, he couldn’t stop. Why wouldn’t the words stop? He didn’t always feel that way. Just sometimes.

“Well. Xander Harris. If that’s the way you feel about me, maybe you can find that ‘someone else’ to marry you!” Tears were threatening to spill out of her eyes as she took off her ring and threw it at him. Then she turned and walked out.

“Anya, wait!” he called out desperately. “I… I like watching you get ready for work in the morning. It’s cute watching you brush your teeth! Your ass wiggles nice when you walk!” She just kept walking down the apartment complex hallway without a backwards glance.

   Xander was already in tears when he turned back to Willow. “You just couldn’t rest until I was as miserable as you, could you? God, Willow, get this off me already!”

   Willow had been busy digging out and finally lighting a candle while Xander had been on Anya. She pushed it into Xander’s hand and threw a handful of crushed herbs over his head, then recited in a shaky voice, “Here is my fault, here is what binds, I humbly ask removal of this geas, in shadow of Myrrdin, beyond treason of Fianna, I beg all to listen. I humbly ask for... for freedom from this...” she swallowed. “Curse.”

   Xander knew the spell had finally broken. Because he had a thousand different things he wanted to say to Willow, and none of them were flattering, and he wasn’t saying any of them. For a long moment the two friends stared at each other, Willow white faced and shaking, Xander still in tears.

   Finally Xander realized what he really wanted to say. And he didn’t want to soften it at all. “Get the hell out.”

   “Xander, I didn’t mean that to happen–”

   “Didn’t you?” He scrubbed the tears from his face. “This is how you’ve been handling  _ everything, _ Willow. You don’t like something, you magic it. You just cursed me  _ because I was trying to be nice. _ ”

   Willow looked down. Xander knew this look, it was the one she had when she tipped over the sand table in kindergarten, and the one she had when she’d broken his RC car when he was nine, and the one she had when Oz had caught her and Xander kissing. The one she had when she’d done something stupid and reckless and really, truly felt bad about it.

   Xander shook his head. “I can’t do this, Willow. I can’t... I can’t trust you. I....” He swallowed. “I’m with Tara on this one. Until you stop doing magic, I can’t be around you.”

   Willow looked up. “That’s not fair.”

   He shook his head. “I love you, Willow, I will always love you. But you can’t. Keep. Doing this.”

   “But I... I tried!”

   Xander rolled his eyes.

   “No, really! I did! I tried! After Tara left, I... I....” She burst into tears. “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t, I couldn’t, I....” She crumpled into herself and fell to the floor. “It hurt. It  _ hurt _ to try and stop, I... I’d need... I’d need... help....” She made a terrible sound as she realized what she’d just said. “Oh, god, I need help. I need help, Xander, I need help!”

   Xander went to his knees. “Okay,” he said. He was still shaken and pissed off, but if she was finally admitting it.... “Okay, let me call Giles. We’ll talk to Buffy, we’ll... we’ll help you stop.” Willow looked up in horror, as if she hadn’t realized that was what she was asking for. “You have to stop.”

   Willow closed her eyes. “Xander, what have I done?”

   Xander didn’t say the truth that he was thinking.  _ You, Willow Rosenberg, have just completely wrecked my relationship with this girlfriend, too. _

 


	21. Angel

 

 

   “Angel.” Buffy stared at the vampire at her door. “What are you... doing here?”

   “You called me,” he said.

   “I didn’t expect you to actually come,” Buffy said. She’d left a message on his machine after she’d come back from meeting with Spike and… and Dawn. She’d called a Scooby meeting, and told everyone what the current status was of Spike and Dawn. Then she’d had to spend a good hour defusing Willow from instantly sitting down with Giles’s Orb of Thessulah and dragging Dawn’s soul back from whatever final resting place it had winged its way to, cursing it straight into that vampire’s body. 

    The whole idea had filled Buffy with a sense of desperate panic.

Fortunately, Giles had agreed with her, though his focus was more on Dawn’s aspect as The Key. He was convinced that Dawn’s soul was not normal, though her body apparently was human enough to be turned like anyone else’s. He was certain that bringing Dawn’s soul back would be tantamount to opening the gates of hell again. Which, fine. Whatever would keep Willow from dragging another soul out of heaven.

After that disastrous meeting Willow had stormed off, Giles had found his scotch again, and Buffy had called Angel. She wasn’t even entirely sure why she had done it. She had felt alone and helpless and had wanted to reach out to someone. When she’d felt this way before this thing had happened with Dawn… she’d been going to visit Spike. A lot. But she couldn’t do that now, and sort of by default she’d called the only other vampire she knew. 

    True, her last visit with Angel hadn’t been all roses. It hadn’t been anything. She’d expected it would be intense and heartfelt, and he  _ was _ glad to see her. She had said she was glad to see him. But... she hadn’t been. She had looked at him and felt nothing. She’d come back from the realms of death and looked upon the love of her life, and she hadn’t… felt… anything.

   So she wasn’t entirely sure, now that she was face to face with him again, why she had called him at all. 

   He didn’t seem to have any doubts, though. “I had to come, Buffy. You needed me.”

   She... hadn’t actually said that. She tried to remember what message she’d left. It was something along the lines of, “Dawn’s dead. She’s been turned into a vampire, and Spike’s her sire. Am I completely crazy for not staking her? Call me.”

   But he hadn’t called, he’d come. Twenty-four hours after she’d called him, he’d actually come. She’d actually never dreamed he would.

   The tiny, frightened little teenage girl inside her wanted to run into Angel’s arms and ask him to make it all better. Buffy didn’t indulge her.

   “Can I come in?”

   “Invite’s still good. I think.”

   “That counts,” Angel said, stepping across the threshold. He paused, and gazed down at her, and dammit, she’d been alone too long. She let herself fall against him, and his strong arms were around her, and... and... and they were cool like Spike’s. It gave Buffy a very vivid flashback of Spike’s body against hers as she was backed against the door of the mental ward’s crappy library, and the sound of his breath in her ear, and feel of his strong hands, and... and... what was she doing fantasizing about Spike when she was hugging Angel?

   Angel pulled away and gazed down at her, and like she had at the neutral zone, the in-between place Angel had called her to when he insisted he had to see her alive, she let him kiss her.

   And Spike’s clever lips and hungry tongue would explore her mouth and make her hungry to taste him and....

   She tried to kiss Angel like she’d kissed Spike, and he pulled away almost instantly. Right. Angel wouldn’t let her have what she’d want. If she’d wanted. Because Angel’s kiss hadn’t really felt like what she’d wanted....

   He stared down at her, his eyes hungry, his breath heaving in his chest. She stared up at him, feeling nothing. “I’m sorry, Buffy.”

   Was he talking about Dawn, or breaking the kiss? Because it struck her that he was talking about himself, and he actually hadn’t mentioned Dawn yet.

   “Yeah,” Buffy said.

   “I guess we should sit down and plan somewhere.” He gestured Buffy into the dining room and held out a chair for her. Buffy wasn’t entirely sure what he was trying to do. Did he think this a date? She sat down, and Angel joined her at the corner of the table, looking grave. “So. First things first. Do you have any idea where they might be holed up?”

   “Who?”

   “Spike, and... uh, his new consort.”

   Buffy frowned. “She’s not his consort. He calls her his daughter.”

   Angel winced, as if that made it even worse. “I checked out the factory on my way over, but it’s still derelict. Do you know where their lair might be?”

   “Yeah, I go there all the time,” Buffy said.

   “Good. I’m glad you have it staked out. Could you give me a rough sketch? Where’s Giles?”

   “Probably out getting a little too drunk at that bar he likes to play guitar in.”

   Angel frowned. “At a time like this?” He rolled his eyes. “Fine. I suppose we don’t really need him. If you can give me a sketch of the place, we can plan our attack. I figured I could engage Spike, while you handle the fledgeling. I know that might be hard on you, so... if you need me to do the actual deed I can, once I subdue Spike. I know I can handle him. It’s not–”

   “Angel, I didn’t call you so you could help me dust them,” Buffy said. “If I wanted them dead, they’d be gone already.”

   Angel frowned. “I thought that was why you needed me. You couldn’t stake her.”

   “I didn’t say I  _ couldn’t _ , I said I didn’t.” She sighed. “I just... I wanted an opinion on the subject that wasn’t Giles or Spike.”

   “What was Giles’s opinion?”

   “That it wasn’t Dawn, and unless I can call Riley and get a chip shoved up her brain, we can’t risk leaving her alive. Which struck me as really hypocritical, considering he was the one who said he wouldn’t have told me about the suck house last year.”

   “Wait, suck house? There’s a sucker gang in Sunnydale?”

   “Yeah, probably again by now,” Buffy said. “That’s not the point. Spike says he can keep her from killing, and Giles says he can’t. And I don’t know which one to believe.”

   “Spike says?”

   “Yeah. He says he has some kind of sire hold over her, and she’s still all newborn and – and I don’t even understand how that could work if he’s not the one who turned her.”

   “He’s not?”

   “They could be lying, but they both say he’s not. And he’s got that chip, so he shouldn’t have been able to hurt her if she was alive. But how could he be her sire if he didn’t kill her?”

   Angel waved his hand dismissively. “He could have resired her, I did it to him once,” he said, surprising Buffy both with the information, and how flippant he was about it. Both Spike and Dawn had discussed the matter with something like reverence. “There is a subtle connection between sires and fledges, she’d probably obey him for a while if he did that, but Buffy, you’re not honestly thinking about leaving them alive?”

   Buffy looked at him, and then looked down, uncertain.

   “Look. I’ve... heard. A little. About some of what’s been going on here. Cordelia keeps in touch with Willow, and... anyway. I know Spike has some kind of government implant in his head. I’d heard they’d been developing those, for a while now. But that doesn’t mean Spike’s harmless, Buffy, and he’s managed to find a way around it. He found a weak spot, and he’s going to take full advantage of this. And this is actually beyond anything I feared he’d do, to corrupt your own sister, I...”

   “But I don’t think he did,” Buffy said. “Corrupt her. I mean, I think he’s keeping her good.”

   “Buffy, she has no soul. He has no soul. You can’t expect either of them to ever do anything but what is in their own best interest. At the first hint of trouble, they’ll lie, or betray you, or abandon you–”

   “Like you did?”

   Angel paused. “I... left for your own good, Buffy.”

   “And Spike stayed.” And nearly died for her. Buffy shook her head. “Look, it doesn’t even matter. Spike isn’t why I called you. I just needed to know what you thought about.... Dawn’s my sister. Do you think that connection could be enough for her to... try to be good?”

   Angel stared at her for a long time, his eyes heavy. “She  _ was _ your sister,” he said. “That’s why I came. If she’s your blood, Buffy... she’s going to do everything in her power to kill you.”

   “What do you mean?”

   “We all do it,” he said. “We all come back. We rise from the grave, and we’ll kill whoever we see, but we’re called, we’re  _ compelled _ to come back to the people we cared about. We need to kill the memory of that love, or we can’t endure it. Love is anathema to the vampire. We have to kill it, destroy it, scrape it off of ourselves and revel in the evil, or we don’t feel alive.”

   It sounded so, so different from how Spike clearly felt about anything. “Spike says he loves her.”

   “No doubt he thinks he does. But it’s not love, Buffy. Believe me, I know. I mean… your little sister! She’s… what. Fifteen? And Spike’s over a century old. It’s so evil.”

Buffy looked up. “I wasn’t even a year older,” she pointed out. “And you were actively pursuing me.”

    “No I wasn’t.” 

    Buffy raised an eyebrow.

    “I mean… well….” He looked uncomfortable. “I-I mean you and me, well. It just  _ happened. _ And it’s not the same. I mean, you were older than your age.”

Buffy just stared at him. 

He shifted awkwardly. “I mean, you were mature. And the Slayer. You know. We had a destiny.” 

Buffy still said nothing.  

    “Anyway,” he said, looking down at the table, “to be all… while calling her his daughter. That’s just sick.”

“She says they aren’t screwing.”

Angel blinked at her bluntness, but shook it off. “Well, even if they’re not, it can’t be love! Not even fatherly love. He’s a soulless vampire, Buffy. It’s got to be possession or… or obsession. And that’s not love. It’s insanity.”

    “You know, people throw that word around too easily,” Buffy snapped. “To be weird or stupid or make bad life choices doesn’t make you  _ insane _ . Abnormal mental or behavioral patterns, or active psychosis, you know, actual psychiatric illness.  _ That _ is insanity, not just some stupid thing you don’t like about another person. You know, like it takes actual doctors, and medication and diagnoses and all that?”

    Angel looked completely at a loss.

    “Sorry,” Buffy said. “My own stuff. Look. Is it possible for her to choose not to kill, because she obeys him, or... because she’s my sister?”

    Angel was silent for a long time. “I killed my sister,” he finally said, with the air of a confession. “She was the only person in my family that I felt I loved. I had... problems. My father and I argued a lot. But Kathy... Little Kathleen. She loved me, and I loved her.” He looked up at Buffy, and there was real sadness in his soulful eyes. “I came home, and she was so glad to see me, she invited me right in. She thought I was an angel, come back from death. Darla thought it was funny, when I told her, said I had the face of one. Called me Angelus.” He swallowed. “I was glad to kill Kathy. It felt so good to drain her blood, snap her neck, feel her little body go limp under me. Better than any kill I can remember.”

   Buffy felt sick. It was the way he was describing it, with such buried passion.

   “I cherished that death for years. It wasn’t my first, but it was something I  _ had _ to do. Even killing my father, punishing him for all those arguments, didn’t feel as good as slaughtering that little girl. My innocent little sister, that I had loved so much as a man.”

   Buffy had her hand over her mouth to contain her nausea, though she was managing to make it look nonchalant, leaning against the table. She swallowed it down. “You’re telling me that Dawn  _ will _ come to kill me. No matter what.”

   “She’ll want to,” Angel said. “You’re the slayer, so she might be too scared now. But as she gets older, and stronger... yeah. She will hunt you. And with Spike as her ally... you know he never gives up. Dawn is likely to become your nemesis, Buffy, if we don’t kill her now.”

   There was a heavy silence between them. Finally Angel asked, “So. You said you knew where their lair was?”

   “Yeah,” she said. A random thought had entered her head. “I wonder if he gave her turkey blood.”

   “What?” 

   “Thanksgiving. She wasn’t here. I wonder if Spike gave her turkey blood for Thanksgiving.” She looked up. “Goodbye, Angel.”

   “What?”

   “Goodbye, Angel. Have a good trip back to LA.”

   “You... you’re sending me...”

   “Back to LA. Yeah. Thanks for coming. Next time, just call back, okay?”  She stood up to go.

   “Buffy... are you angry with me?”

   Buffy stared at him. “You tell me that story, and then you expect me to just dance away, still starry-eyed?”

   “I didn’t have a soul then, Buffy. Angelus isn’t me. I wasn’t the same person.”

   “But when you were telling the story, you were,” Buffy said. “ _ I, _ you said.  _ I  _ felt, _ I  _ feel. Reveling in that death with all the same passion. You know, your dissociative disorder is a little unnerving.”

   “Excuse me?”

   Buffy shook her head. “Never mind. Like I said, if I need them dust, I’ll dust them myself. They really won’t be that hard to kill.”

   “Spike is–”

   “All that and a bag of chips,” Buffy reminded him. “I have this. Thanks, Angel.” She frowned. “Is that why  _ Angel _ ?”

   “What?”

   “Is that why you go by Angel? Because of your sister?”

   Angel looked sad. Legitimately sad. “With the soul... it just seemed right.”

   Buffy gazed at him for another long moment. There was something in that, something even he wasn’t seeing, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.... “Goodbye, Angel,” she said quietly.

***

   Angel headed out the door, not quite sure what had just happened. He’d come to help Buffy stake her sister because it was too hard for her to kill the girl. He knew it would be. Buffy had too tender a heart. She hadn’t been able to kill him as Angelus, because he looked like Angel. She wouldn’t be able to kill this creature that looked like Dawn. But Angel knew  _ he _ could. He could dismiss his feelings about it, save her from the burden of having to slay. It was his destiny to help the helpless, even when the helpless one was the slayer. Particularly then.

   But he’d just been sent away, and he knew there’d be a fight with Buffy if he went and took out the two on his own. He wished she’d just see reason, but… oh well. He headed glumly to his car, and saw Willow coming up the street. She didn’t look so good. Like she’d been crying. No doubt this whole thing was stressing the Scoobies out, and would until Buffy slew the pair. 

   “Angel!” Willow looked perplexed as he stood with his hand on the open car door. “Are you... leaving?”

   “Buffy doesn’t want my help,” Angel said. “But I know she’ll want yours.” He hesitated. If he couldn’t help Buffy, he should make sure she had the support she needed. He knew she couldn’t stand on her own. “You know... I wanted to thank you. For returning my soul to me. I don’t think I ever did tell you how grateful I was. But you made the world a better place, and helped me see my role in destiny. I’m glad you did it.” He touched Willow’s shoulder and smiled at her, reassuring. “Magic is your calling, Willow. I’m glad you’re here to help Buffy. I know she’ll be safe with your magic to rely on. Take care of her for me.”

   Willow didn’t answer him. She just stared at him, white-faced. He couldn’t read her expression, but he figured it was stunned and proud. He got into the car, feeling sure he’d made an impression. He’d been perfectly clear to Buffy on what she had to do. Buffy would stake Spike and the newborn, and Willow would help with her magics, and Giles would stand beside her and be her gallant watcher, and Xander would... do something. That was how Angel  always saw them, in his mind, still high school students, still gathered around that library table, never changing, never aging, still scheming and laughing like the kids they were. Safe and secure, no troubles, nothing they couldn’t handle. That was how he had to see them.

   He couldn’t leave them any other way.     

 


	22. Addict

 

 

   “What would you want, if I didn’t have this chip?” Spike asked.

   Dawn looked over. It was broad day outside, very late for them, and he was stretched out on his bed in just his t-shirt and jeans, looking kind of sleepy. Dawn was sitting on the floor trying to teach little calico Nodd how to hunt mice. She’d broken two of the mouse’s legs to make it easier for the kitten, but Nodd was more interested in scritches and pettings than she was in mice.

   Dawn had been glad to meet Clem. Clem was a heck of a nice guy, a demon bachelor who apologized for not cleaning up his cave, and sat down with her to watch Knight Rider. He’d had three kittens he was glad to share with Spike, in exchange for getting the snake demon out from under his couch. Dawn didn’t ask how the snake demon had gotten there. She thought it was better not to know.

   Spike took it out with a laugh, brushed the dust bunnies off his shirt, and proudly presented Dawn with her basket of treats, and... they’d been too damn cute to eat. “Can’t we keep them?”

   Spike had looked touched, then firm. “They turn into cats, you know.”

   Dawn said she knew, and she didn’t mind, and Spike had relented (it wasn’t as if she’d had to twist his arm) and they’d taken the little basket home. Two tabbies and a calico. Dawn had named them Winken, Blinken and Nodd, and was considering breeding mice for them to chase, because between the three kittens and chasing them herself the lower crypt was going to be mouse-free far too soon.

   “What do you mean?” Dawn asked. “Would I want to hunt with you and stuff?”

   “Well, yeah,” he said. He stretched his arm up above his head and looked up at the ceiling. “Would you like to leave Sunnydale, go out into the world, hunt, slaughter your way across continents, that sort of thing?”

   Dawn collected the injured mouse, and the kitten, and carried them both over. “Well, that’s what you used to do, right?” she asked, plonking herself casually on the end of his bed. She set the kitten down to pet it while she absentmindedly crunched the head off the mouse herself. She squeezed its blood out into her mouth and tossed the half pulped carcass onto the floor, where Winken and Blinken promptly started batting it around.

   “Yeah,” Spike said, watching her under sleepy lids. “Just wondered if it was any great ambition of yours.”

   Dawn shrugged, her attention still half on the kitten. “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, it would kinda suck leaving Sunnydale. I can feel the energies of the hellmouth sometimes, when I’m half asleep. It’s like listening to the ocean or something.”

   “Yeah, that is pretty neat,” Spike said.

   “And wouldn’t you miss Buffy?”

   Spike regarded her. “Would you?”

   “Yeah,” Dawn said, holding out her blood-stained fingers for Nodd to sniff at. “Not that I see her much, but it’s kinda cool knowing she’s just over there at the house. And really, how many other vampires can claim that their sister’s the Slayer? That’s actually really neat. Might give me bragging rights or something. I mean, it’s not like I could brag about it when I was still human. Had to be all incognito-girl about it.”

   She flopped down on her elbow sideways at the end of the bed, and used Nodd’s tail to tickle Spike’s bare foot. “Why do you ask?”

   “Just been thinking about it, ‘s all,” he mused. “That fight I had with Buffy, when she came to stake you? I kept expecting my chip to go off. I’ve been going over the fight again and again, and... I wasn’t being that careful. Damn thing should have gone off half a dozen times, and it just didn’t.”

   “Do you think it’s stopped working?” She realized she would have been more excited about this news a few weeks ago. Finally seeing Buffy had caused some kind of switch to go off in her head, and she didn’t feel so desperate to go out and hunt anymore. Not that it wasn’t fun sparring with Spike in the spacious upper level of the crypt. (Oh, so  _ that’s _ why you never got any furniture! It’s not just a living space, it’s a gym! Spike had rolled his eyes when she’d realized that, as if it had been bloody obvious.) And Dawn loved it when he’d take her out to stake newborns at night, because the violence was a total rush, and the kill, when she got one, made her blood sing. But the eager desperation she’d had to go out and slaughter humans? Didn’t seem worth the risk.

   “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose we could go out and check.”

   “Hit the streets?”

   “Check out all the goodies?” he said with a sinister glee. Then he tilted his head back with a groan. “I’d have to psych myself up for it,” he confessed. “Been a while.”

   “And it would piss off the slayer.”

   “There’s that. But if it had stopped working, is that what you’d want?”

   Dawn wasn’t sure. She was a bit twisted up inside. The idea of Spike slaughtering whole villages, fighting down angry mobs, dancing in unrepentant joy, his feet splashing in the spilled blood, the bodies ranging around him as far as the eye could see, it was all pretty awesome. But every time she saw that little fantasy, she never really saw herself in it. She could just about imagine killing someone herself, something intimate and bloody, but she didn’t see herself as a  _ Señora _ or a Big Bad at all.

   Also, she only really saw that image of Big Bad Spike in the past tense, in the world of candlelight and horses, or if she really tried the world of punk-rockers and fast cars. She couldn’t really see Spike slaughtering in, say, an LA mall with his coat flapping, and people screaming. It was just... none of those images really matched Spike as she knew him. That was a facet of him, but there was more to him than that. He liked The Wiz, and Charlie Brown TV specials, and he wasn’t just a killer.

   He was the guy who let her keep the kittens.

   “It’s all mute anyway if the chip  _ is _ still working,” she said, rather than make a decision.

   “Moot,” Spike corrected her. “We’d have to test.”

   “Here.” She picked up little Nodd and set her on Spike’s chest. “See if you can kill her. Then we’ll know if it works or not.”

   Spike hesitated. “If the chip’s stopped working, you’ll lose your pet. I have to really mean it.”

   Dawn shrugged. “Then I’ll see what kitten tastes like.” She cocked her head as a thought suddenly occurred to her. “If you  _ can _ eat her, and you gave her some of your blood, would she turn into a vampire kitty?”

   “No,” Spike said with a fond smile. 

   “How do you know? Have you ever tried it?” Spike was smart and awesome and all  _ Señor  _ and everything, but sometimes adults just fell into thinking you couldn’t do something because they’d been told that all their lives.

   “Dru did. A lot. Never worked, though. She’d just cry over her dead pet for a spell, then get a new one to kill.”

   “Oh.” Well, that sucked. Vampire kitten would have been awesome. “Go ahead and try and eat her. I don’t mind.”

   “Okay.” Spike let loose his fangs, held the kitten to his mouth, and winced. “Ow. Okay. So much for that.” He defanged, handing Dawn back her kitten.

   Dawn scratched behind its ears. “Well. Maybe it’s just animals. Maybe if you tried a human–”

   “I don’t really want a migraine just now,” he said. “Humans hit harder.” He sighed. “Must have been a fluke.”

   “Well. Maybe it’s just Buffy,” Dawn said, still distracted by the kitten. “She  _ did _ die. Maybe the chip thinks she’s still dead or something. No-decay zombie Buffy, you know?”

   “Hadn’t thought of that,” Spike said. He smiled. “That’d be nice. That’d change everything. Mmm.”

   “What would it change? I mean, you still don’t want to kill her, do you?”

   “No. But I’d like to fight her.” He groaned again, longing this time. “Oh,  _ god, _ what I’d give to hit her properly.”

   “You should try it.” She set the kitten on the floor and flopped herself next to Spike, hoping for a cuddle. He put his arm around her, so that was all right, and she put her head on his chest. “I’d like to see Buffy again,” Dawn said. “Tell her about the kittens.”

   “You’d like that, pet?”

   “Yeah.” She idly fingered Spike’s t-shirt. “I miss Buffy.”

   “You still want to kill her?”

   “Sort of,” Dawn said. “It’s....”

   “Complicated,” they both finished. Then they laughed.

   Spike didn’t get around to shunting her back to her own alcove, and Dawn wasn’t about to remind him. She fell fast asleep, safe in the circle of his arm.

 

***   

   “I haven’t been able to think, or sleep, or...” Xander was talking into his hands as he held his face. He wasn’t crying – currently – but he wasn’t at all composed. “I didn’t mean to break up with her! It was just so complicated, and.... God, I miss her so much.”

   “I know,” Buffy said. “I’m sorry.”

   “And I can’t even tell her that I didn’t mean it, because I did, and she knows everything I said was the absolute truth! That’s the thing about it, it was true, it’s just it wasn’t the  _ only _ truth, you know? Because yeah... the fact that she spent a thousand years inflicting putrefying diseases and unspeakable tortures and hideous deaths on guys who had done nothing more horrible than cheat on their girlfriends, yeah, that wigs me out! I mean, it’s wiggy! Tell me truthfully, is that wiggy? Am I crazy to be wigged by this?”

   “Nope, that’s pretty wiggifying.”

   “I know, right? One thousand years of evil-vengeance-killing-machine, and I’m supposed to just ignore that? I can’t! But I was willing to accept that that’s not the person she is _ now _ , you know? And it was like the spell didn’t let me say that, because I’d said it already, a hundred times.” He sniffed. “And yeah... how we got together... that was pretty weird. I mean, being called down to have a lifetime of dimension-altering-hellscape inflicted upon me and everyone in Sunnydale because Willow and I shared a few kisses? They were just kisses!”

   Buffy raised an eyebrow.

   “Well, okay, we  _ meant _ them, but we were both virgins, for god’s sake!”

   “Yep,” Buffy said ruefully. “Sex changes everything.”

   “It does. And Anya is so....” He stopped and swallowed. “You’d think, if we were so compatible that way, that everything else would fall into place. And... really, it did. We worked! If I’d just been more honest, we could have sorted all this out before it blew up and... and hurt her so bad....” He buried his head back in his hands. “I don’t know if I’m ever gonna see her again.”

   “You’ll see her again,” Buffy said.

   “How do you know?”

   “Because Giles is leaving in a couple days,” Buffy said. “She’ll either have to come run the Magic Box, or let it close.”

   “Which would mean she loves money more than me,” Xander muttered.

   “Well... money hasn’t ever hurt her.”

   Xander swallowed. “I guess money can’t lie.” He looked up at the ceiling. “I shouldn’t be dumping this on you, god. Like you don’t have enough troubles.”

   “Please,” Buffy said. “Your problems are light, and they distract me from mine. Dump away.”

   Xander shook his head. “I literally have no one else to talk to. Willow’s like... still....”

   “Looks like she should be where I was,” Buffy said. “I know. But there’s no rehab ward for magic. She’s gotta get through this on her own.”

   “Do you think you could tell Tara? I mean, you’re still doing that grief circle thing every week, aren’t you?”

   “It’s not Tara’s job to sort out Willow’s addiction,” Buffy said. “Willow has to do this herself, or it’s not gonna stick.”

   “But, I mean, maybe if Tara was right there telling her not to...?”

   Buffy regarded him. She’d heard enough about Xander’s home life to know already. “Does your mom’s nagging stop your dad from drinking?”

   Xander sagged. “Makes it worse.”

   Buffy nodded. “If she stops on her own... she’s stopping for herself. Maybe... maybe the end game is to be worthy of Tara again, but Tara can’t do it for her...” Buffy swallowed. It sounded like someone else she knew. Labeling Spike’s problem an “addiction” rather than black-and-white “evil” made this whole thing look a little different.

   The thing was, Angel showing up had put a different spin on things. Buffy had been reminded of the difference between soulless Angelus and Spike. Angelus without the soul had been consistently cruel and completely inhuman. And he saw love as anathema. Spike... wanted to love people and to be loved. And not just sexually, or Dawn wouldn’t have said the things she had. 

   And Buffy missed Dawn. She was burning with jealousy about Dawn. She wanted her sister back, dammit. Or... whatever was left of her sister. Maybe it was the fault of those monks, but every drop of blood in Buffy’s body loved that little girl. And now she knew she’d never have anything to do with her if she didn’t at least get along with Spike.

   The problem was, she had been afraid if she tried to get along with him... they’d end up getting along a lot better than she was really comfortable with. The truth was, she felt like Willow, upstairs trying to not do magic. What her body wanted was right there at her fingertips, and she just wanted to reach out.... And strangely, knowing that he was already sort of family now, through Dawn? That made it even worse.

   “So. Anya. Willow. Giles. What are we up to?” Xander asked. “You figure out what to do about the Dawnster yet? Is there dust in her future?”

   Buffy took a deep breath. “Tara thinks we should trust them. Keep an eye on them, but trust them.”

   “How can we? Spike’s a vile, evil killing machine who spent over a century cutting through swaths of human beings without remorse. And now Dawn’s the same. She’s a monster. We can’t forget what they are, or what he was. How could anyone trust them?”

   Buffy realized there was a bit of a disconnect here. “Xander? You were about to marry a thousand year old vengeance demon who probably killed more men than Spike, and I’ve never heard her sounding all remorsey.”

   “She-she’s said she wouldn’t do stuff like that anymore.” 

   “Spike’s said the same,” Buffy said. “Anya was a demon, like Spike is. Like... like Tara thought she was. And Willow was okay with that when she thought Tara might be part demon. And you were okay with Anya. Why the hell do I have to be the only one who’s not allowed to trust a demon?”

   “That’s not...” Xander stopped. “But that isn’t the s.... And it’s not like Anya is a vam.... I mean, Anya isn’t a demon any _ more _ , she lost her powers.”

   “So? I have powers. Willow and Tara have powers. I mean, Willow’s done terrible things with hers. Remember the demon magnet? Does that mean she can’t be trusted?”

   “No, it’s just… it’s not the same, Buffy.”

   “How?”

   “Anya has a soul,” Xander said.

   “How do you know? Did you ever ask?” Buffy asked. “We only care about the dumb soul thing because Angel made such a big deal about it. Is the soul of a vengeance demon the same as the soul of a human being? Does the soul really mean you’re not going to be an asshole? I mean... really. It didn’t stop Angel from abandoning me.”

   “I actually think Angel was right to leave.”

   “Oh?” Buffy asked. “Leaving me to face Glory? That worked out great, didn’t it.”

   Xander went white.

   “Another fighter would have been... god. I can’t even begin to say. Spike didn’t abandon either me or Dawn, ever.”

   “He just wanted to get into your pants, Buffy.”

   “While I was dead? Xander, if that was the case, he’d have taken off, or left you all to fight without him!”

   Xander looked uncomfortable. 

   “He stood by me, even when I was dead. And even now that  _ she’s _ dead, he’s standing by her. I mean... what kind of hoops would he have to jump through before we’d trust him even a little bit? I mean what?”

   “Buffy...?”

   “Would he have to put some electronic leash in his skull so he couldn’t hurt humans? I mean... he’s got that. He’s stopped trying to get rid of it as far as I can see. Would he have to stand and fight beside us? He’s done that. With you. All summer, right? Would he have to get nearly tortured to death and still not betray us? Because he did that! Would he have to keep pushing to find her, when you were ready to give up and bitching about your corns? Would he have to devote his entire life to one of us? Because now he’s doing that, too!”

   “Buffy....”

   “What do you have against Spike?”

   “Huh?”

   “No, seriously. What do you have against him? What did he do that makes it so you’ll only trust him so far?”

   “Oh, well, let’s see. Slaughtered people for a century.”

   “Off the list, Anya did that too.”

   “Um. He spent a year trying to kill you.”

   “Off the list. Anya tried to kill you, too.”

   “He betrayed us to Adam.”

   “Angel betrayed us, and you came to trust him again.”

   “I still didn’t like him.”

   “Xander!”

   Xander stopped. “I just... I just can’t, Buffy. There’s something about him, I think about him, and I think about what he wants from you and I just....” He shook he head.

   “Xander, if you’re jealous, can’t you just admit that’s it?”

   “What’s it matter?” Xander asked. “It’s not as if you’re wanting to go off and date Spike.”

   Buffy looked away, so he wouldn’t see her blush. “Even if I was, that’s not the point. We’re talking about trusting him. If he was going to betray us, it would have been before he was nearly killed. He had every chance to walk away, or sell Dawn out, and....”

   “But he’s still  _ evil _ , Buffy. He’ll steal and he’ll cheat and he’ll say the most awful things.”

   Buffy shook her head, feeling hopeless. He still couldn’t see. “Anya’s greedy,” she said. “And… tactless. Willow’s hubris is... I mean, we both know. Giles... shot me up with drugs and nearly killed me for an eighteenth birthday present, and now he’s about to abandon us and run off to England with a bottle in his fist. And you, you told me to run after an emotionally abusive prick because it was all my fault he cheated on me.”

   “I never said that!”

   “Didn’t you?” This was something that had been bothering her ever since she’d heard all the stories of abuse and corruption in group. “I didn’t love Riley enough, and I shouldn’t let him go just because I don’t like ultimatums. Wasn’t that what you said?”

   “Riley wasn’t abusive,” Xander said, defensive.

   “Yeah,” Buffy said. “Now that I’ve been in therapy, I know he was. He was controlling and demanding and he claimed his suicidal addiction was all my fault.” While Spike had turned his back on his, for the sake of Buffy and Dawn. “Not to mention, my TA. Conflict of interest enough to get him fired.  Also, he thought torturing demons was an a-okay thing to do,” Buffy realized, “which… if they were dogs, would you  _ still _ have thought he was a good guy?”

Xander glared at her. “You didn’t feel this way about any of that stuff at the time.” 

“I was naïve. And so were you. We all screw up all over the place. Spike just wants us to give him and Dawn a chance.”

   “She’s a monster, Buffy,” Xander said. 

   “Aren’t we all?” Buffy took a deep breath. “Xander? I need you to run by Spike’s.”

   Now Xander looked blank. “Huh?”

   “I need you to take a message to him. Tell him I’d like to see Dawn. Maybe... maybe the park by the cemetery, after sunset?”

   “Why am I taking this message?”

   “First, because it’s kinda on your way between here and your apartment, and second... I think before you say too loudly to kill her... you should meet the new Dawn.”

 

 


	23. Sister

 

 

_   I don’t know why I’m doing this,  _ Xander thought to himself as he went to Spike’s crypt. He pushed on the door to open it, and found himself stopped. Huh? The inner door was locked? Why was the door locked? Did this crypt even  _ have _ a lock? He wrestled and cursed and kicked at the thing, and finally someone shouted at him, “You could try bloody knocking, Harris!”

   Xander stood there feeling like an idiot for a minute, and then knocked, politely, three times. “Hang on a tick. And close the outer door, I don’t fancy a sunburn.”

   Xander closed the outer door behind him – it felt strange. He _ never _ did that – and waited in the dark for a few seconds before he heard a bolt being drawn, and Spike opened the crypt door.

   Xander had never realized how sunlit Spike’s crypt actually was. The windows were frosted and barred, and outside they were further shielded by foliage, but Spike had actually chosen a lair which enabled him to live by natural light. He’d never realized it until those few seconds in utter darkness between the two doors. “Why the hell did you lock the door?” Xander asked.

   “Why the hell do you never knock?”

   The truth was, it had never occurred to Xander to.

   “Xander!”

   Dawn’s voice. Xander hadn’t been prepared for it. It actually felt like being struck. A second later a blur of teenage vampire lunged for him, and Xander took a step back, just as Spike caught Dawn’s stomach in one hand and pushed her back a bit. “Wait,” he said. “You okay?”

   “Yeah, I just wanted to hug him,” Dawn said, impatient.

   “You okay with that, Harris?”

   “Um... yeah. I suppose. So long as this doesn’t involve a lot of fangs and horror and bitey-rarr death stuff.”

   Dawn chuckled, and jumped up, putting her cool arms around his neck. It... felt like Dawn. A chilly Dawn who had just been outside or something, but Dawn. “Hi! Missed you!”

   “Hi.”

   “Come on! You gotta see. Spike got me my own coat, check it out.” She grabbed a leather jacket off a new table that was in the back of the crypt, and put it on, modeling it. That... didn’t  _ quite _ look like Dawn. It was a little more punk style than LA chic. Her nails were black, too. But then she dove to the floor and picked up something fluffy, and held it up. 

   Xander expected horror again, but all Dawn did was say, “Spike got me some kittens! Aren’t they adorable? I called this one Winken, because he’s got one eye a different color, and this one’s Blinken, and... I think Nodd’s downstairs somewhere. I have to carry them up and down the ladder. I’ve been telling Spike we should make a staircase, because that would be like  _ way _ easier than going up and down and up and down, and the kittens could get up easier too, but he says it’s not a priority, and if I want them, I can make them my damn self. Hey! Maybe you could make us some stairs! Or you could give me a book or something on it, at least. I’m lots stronger now, and I can probably carry the wood in myself. I can–”

   “Settle down, niblet,” Spike said quietly. “Xander’s still trying to figure out if he needs to stake you.”

   Xander looked over at Spike, and realized he’d never seen him quite like this before. Spike was wary, on guard. He was up on the balls of his feet, and his eyes were bright and focused entirely on Xander. It didn’t look quite predatory, (which Xander  _ had _ seen) but it was very close to it. He realized he probably should have made the stake in his back pocket a little less obvious. “I... I didn’t come here for that.”

   “Didn’t think you did,” Spike said, but there was still this dark undercurrent which was nerve wracking. Xander realized if Spike had thought that, he wouldn’t have let him in.

   “Um. Buffy said she wanted to see Dawn. Tonight, in the park. Maybe by the swing sets or something?”

   “We can do that,” Spike said with a slight smile.

   Dawn was tapping her foot with impatience. “Are you done debating my demise?” she asked Xander. “Am I gonna be all dusty in a minute? ‘Cause I’d  _ really  _ like to show you my room. Spike made me a room! I sleep in a coffin. He keeps promising he’ll get me a real bed, but – Oh! And mice? Mice are awesome! Come on! Maybe we can play checkers or something before you go. Spike’s trying to teach me poker, but I’m not real good at it yet.”

   She ran down and slid halfway down the ladder before popping her head up again. “This? Is so cool!”

   And she disappeared again.

   “Is... is she always like this?”

   “She’s glad to see you,” Spike said. “You headed down?”

   “Yeah... yeah, I think so.” He took the stake out of his back pocket and held it out for Spike. “You want me to turn this over?”

   Spike regarded him for a second. “Nah. Keep it. She can get a little handsy. Do her good to know you’re armed.”

   Xander swallowed. The full reality of what had happened hit him like a blow. This wasn’t a pair of monsters lurking in this crypt. This was Dawn. It  _ was _ Dawn, not just a vampire, but Dawn. But she wasn’t safe, and she wasn’t the same, and there was an element of danger for everyone now, not just him but her, and Spike, and Buffy, and everyone.

   But they’d been through this before. When they found out Dawn was a key, they’d had this. And faced with Dawn, still perky, still excitable, still fun, still... well, still seeming to have a slight crush on him, Xander didn’t know what to think.

   Except that Spike was doing something kinda awesome. Someone had taken Dawn away from them, and Spike had given her back. A little the worse for wear and not quite the same, but they had her back. Xander headed down the ladder to do something he’d never thought he’d get to do again. He was going to hang with the Dawnmeister.

 

***

 

   “Hi.”

   “Hi.”

   “Oh, would you quit with the awkward ‘hi’s’ already?” Dawn jumped forward and grabbed Buffy in a serious hug. To her joy, Buffy hugged her back with just as much enthusiasm. And, hey, that was nifty, when the hug got a little too strong Dawn didn’t feel like she was about to suffocate. She just hugged her back even harder.

   “I really, really,  _ really _ missed you!”

   “I missed you, too,” Buffy said, her voice soft and miserable in Dawn’s ear.

   Dawn pulled back. “Hey, you okay?”

   Buffy nodded, and she looked a little tearful. “I just... I really thought you were dead. I mean... I know you  _ are _ , I mean. I mean sort of–”

   “No, you’re right, I’m dead,” Dawn said. “And it’s kinda awesome.” Dawn grabbed hold of one of the swings and settled down on it. “So, what’s been going on at the house? Xander and I played checkers this afternoon, it was pretty cool. I went all bumpy, and spooked him, and he jumped, and he  _ really _ smelled scared, but I couldn’t get him to pee his pants or anything. Spike says I shouldn’t tease him like that.”

   “I said threatening him was my job,” Spike said, standing on one of the swings and setting it going, his coat flapping like Batman.

   Buffy sat down gingerly on the swing beside Dawn and Dawn talked about Xander, and the Scooby gossip he’d told them, and she knew Tara and Willow had broken up – really a bitch that, she’d thought the two of them dating was so cool – but now was it true that Willow had given up magic? And because she’d kind of broken up Xander and Anya with a dumb spell? Not that she was going to miss Anya much, ‘cause she was kind of hard to get to know, but Xander seemed real eaten up about it – well, not  _ literally _ eaten, which would have been kinda funny,  _ actually _ eaten by a broken heart. Buffy had looked disturbed at that, and then Spike said something about black humor going into overdrive, and that slasher flicks were funny now, too. Buffy had kind of nodded, and said she supposed she could deal with that. ( _ Deal _ with that? Dawn wasn’t sure what to make of that.) 

So she changed the subject and told Buffy about the kittens, and the changes to Spike’s crypt, and Clem, and the snake demon, and how come Mom had never showed them The Wiz? And whenever Dawn made a comment that seemed to startle Buffy, like the eaten-up thing, Spike would say something else quiet and neutral sounding which... well, which Dawn kinda felt really killed her thunder, but it wasn’t until like the seventh time it happened when she realized, Spike was still worried Buffy wanted to stake her.

   “Oh, did you think because I’m teasing you that I’m gonna go kill someone?” she asked Buffy. “Because I’m totally not. Neither of you want it, I can be okay with that. I mean, I  _ would _ like it if I could have human blood again, but–”

   “ _ Again _ ?” Buffy asked, with a harsh edge which sent complete razor blades down Dawn’s spine. Buffy was... scary as hell, now, which was kinda awesome, and kinda annoying, but Dawn was still glad she was her sister.

   “Some of Willy’s special delivery,” Spike said quickly. “Donated. Hospital surplus. Figured she’d be too curious if I didn’t let her have a taste.”

   Buffy hesitated, then sighed. “Well, I guess Mom gave you some wine last Christmas.”

   “Oh, do we have plans for Christmas?” Dawn said. “I mean, I’m evil now, so I don’t know exactly what we’d  _ do _ for Evil Christmas. I mean, I guess you could sneak down someone’s chimney and go all Halloweentown on the trees. Speaking for everyone who is, you know, me, right now? If I had an invite to some house, I would  _ totally _ do that, just to mess with people. I would love a vampire teddy bear, with the flying and the fangs, and the man-eating wreath and all would be just  _ hilarious _ . So. Just, you know, dropping some hints. Christmas is a-coming, after all. Spike said you still weren’t ready to meet me Thanksgiving.”

   “Did you give her turkey blood?” Buffy asked, and she sounded shy.

   Spike chuckled. “Lamb.” 

   “Which I call  _ lame _ ,” Dawn said. “You can taste the lanolin or whatever that grease is. What  _ does _ turkey blood taste like?”

   “Grainy,” Spike said.

   “Yeah, no, did you think I’d killed someone? Nothing human, too risky, witches, slayers, pissed off Xander, yadda-yadda. But I  _ did _ get to take out another vamp last night. Spike’s been letting me take out newborns, but this guy was totally older, which was kinda cool. The fight is a total rush, Buffy. How come you never told me that? Now can I come patrolling with you sometimes? I mean, hello, not as if I’m gonna stain my virgin eyes or something with anything too scary. I  _ am _ the too scary, you know?”

   Dawn realized she’d just been talking about herself, and she went back to Buffy. “So what has been going on with you? Spike said you were sick?”

   Buffy nodded. “I got... kinda sad when I thought you were just gone.”

   “Oh, well, I am gone,” Dawn said. “No soul, free as a bird, but I have Dawny echoes and awesome not-Dawnness too. Spike’s been teaching me how to fight demons. Wanna see?”

   “Yeah, sure.”

   Dawn pulled them over closer to the creek where there was a clear space, and said, “Okay, here’s the first routine. We have  _ routines _ now. For practice, he says.” And she started going through it.

   Buffy watched her quietly for a bit, and then started to talk to Spike, which Dawn didn’t  _ really _ mind, even though she hoped Buffy was still paying attention, because she was doing this kinda awesome routine with stuff she hadn’t been able to do in a human body, lots better than the gymnastics she’d been in when she was seven, but it  _ seemed _ as if Buffy was still looking.

   “She looks good,” Buffy said. “Happy.”

   “Happy’s easy, slayer,” Spike said. “It takes a special kind of curse to go all brood-addict.”

   “Yeah, but... you seem to have balanced it pretty good. The vampire with the not-killing and stuff.”

   “Really don’t want you to feel you have to stake her, pet. She’s kind of important to me.”

Dawn grinned. She loved that she seemed to have some kind of hold over Spike, too, because the fact that she kinda felt hooked on him sometimes, well, it kinda freaked her out, but she didn’t want it to stop, either, because when just one proud smile can completely make your  _ world _ ? Well. That was kinda awesome, too. But it did feel a little one-sided sometimes, what with Spike’s massive Buffy-obsession.

   “Did you mean that?” Buffy asked. “When you called her your daughter?”

   “Yeah.” He made a slightly uncomfortable noise. “I know it probably feels as if I stole her or something.”   

   “A little,” Buffy confessed. 

   Huh. Dawn hadn’t thought about that, but he was right. She’d been Buffy’s and now she was Spike’s. But being Spike’s was a good thing. She felt more held by Spike’s very clear vampire affection than she’d ever felt by Buffy’s kinda wonky slayer-love.

   “But... I believe you,” Buffy went on “When you say you didn’t do it to her? I believe you.”

   “I just reclaimed her, is all,” Spike said. “It was either that or....” He sighed.

   “What did she mean? When she said she was gone, and the not-Dawnness?”

   “It means if you went where you say you went... then Dawn had to go there too. Which means this is someone else. But she’s very like her.”

   “An echo,” Buffy said. “You’ve talked to her about it?”

“Yeah. She knows I cared about who she was, but I care about who she  _ is _ too, and… that’s what matters. I think she’d be more hurt by it if I weren’t just an echo of someone myself. But because I  _ am _ her dad, she kinda gets it.” 

“I’m glad she gets it. She seems to be handling it better than she did when she found out she was a key.”

Dawn cringed, and almost messed up her routine. She wished Buffy would forget all that. The whole thing about finding out her very existence had been a lie seemed  _ so _ silly now. Same as her freak-out when Mom had died. Death was just death, was all.

“The key thing was different, it came out of nowhere,” Spike said. “It undermined everything she thought she knew. This was a clear transformation into someone else. And she can be someone great, slayer. She’s... she can be real sweet, and very brave. I was... actually really touched when she stayed. When you came? I’d told her to run, but...”

   “She has your loyalty.”

   Spike was caught up short by that. Dawn could tell by the low sound he made in his throat, which Buffy probably couldn’t hear, but Dawn knew it was the sound he  _ always _ made when he was doing little daydreaming fantasies about being with Buffy, like the wish he’d made that he could fight her the morning Dawn had fallen asleep on his arm.

   “You should have told me before,” Buffy added.

   “I was scared to death, love. For you, for her.”

   “For yourself,” Buffy added, not sounding fond.

   “Well, you _ did _ keep raising the stakes of what I had to lose,” he said softly, and Buffy... was she blushing? “I couldn’t help it, pet, you know you leave me tongue-tied.”

   “Oh, so it’s my fault, huh?”

   Spike chuckled. “No. The fact that you tie me up in knots is a curse I’ve inflicted on my own damn self. Doesn’t change the fact that you do.”

   Buffy paused a bit before she said, “I suppose that’s fair. There’s... something someone at my old group said. That it doesn’t matter what people say, only what they do.” Dawn glanced over when she saw movement, and it made her kind of uncomfortable to see Buffy touching Spike’s hand. She wasn’t sure why, unless it was the expression on Spike’s face when she did it. “You did a good thing, Spike. Looking out for her. I won’t forget it.”

   “I was too late.”

   “But you did what you could. That means–”

   “Okay, now check out this bit!” Dawn called, and she tried the handspring that Spike had tried to teach her. She failed, and Spike called out, “Keep your dominant leg straight and tight! You were using your left!” He looked over at Buffy. “We have to mirror image our sparring. She’s not a southpaw.”

   Dawn had to focus on the move at that point, and missed some of what they said to each other, but when she looked over, Buffy had a kind of a soft smile on her face. She failed the move twice more before she finally got it, and she stood proud and looked at Buffy, who quickly burst into applause, even though Dawn wasn’t even sure she’d seen it. It had sure looked as if Buffy had been looking at Spike.

   Dawn came back up to them and stood between them, taking Buffy’s hands. “Wasn’t that, like, ten levels of awesome?”

   “It’s pretty impressive, Dawnie.”

   “You want to try and fight with me?” she asked. “Bet you I can make you lose your stake!”

   Spike looked seriously nervous at that. “Ah, Dawn... maybe that’s not the best idea.”

   “You think I’m gonna hurt her? Look, I can totally control this bloodlust.” Dawn vamped out and took in a big whiff of her sister. “Delicious. Not gonna bite her. See?” She shook the teeth off.

   “You’re actually not the one I was worried about.”

   Buffy looked over at Spike. “You prefer I used a knife rather than anything wooden?”

   “That obvious?”

   “Buffy’s not gonna hurt me!” Dawn chastised Spike, pushing him playfully.

   “Protective, sire?” Buffy asked him.

   Spike had a smile on his face Dawn had never, ever seen before. “You know I am.”

   “Metal only,” Buffy said, pulling a knife out of her boot, which Dawn had tried like ten times when she was human, and had only resulted in blisters, so she’d given it up. Did slayers have like slayer anti-blister mojo or something? “Safe enough?”

   Spike nodded, and Dawn pulled Buffy away from him, putting herself where Spike could see the two of them. She pulled up her fangs again and grinned. “Now, watch this.”

   She lost, of course. She felt like an idiot, but that last opening had just seemed so obvious, and she hadn’t realized Buffy knew how to fake like that. “Damn. You’re actually good!” she said from the flat of her back, looking up at her sister.

   “You’re not bad yourself,” Buffy said, hoisting Dawn up. “You’re raw, but there’s some power.”

   “That’s from Spike. He says it’s in the blood, ‘cause he’s all the Big Bad, and it’s like I get cheat-codes or extra-credit-classes built in, so it’s like I’m older than most fledges, except I don’t know as much as like a real elder or anything.”

   “I was going to say. Strengthwise you remind me a bit of that bitch I took out freshman year. What did she call herself... Sunday?”

   “Gor, Sunday?” Spike laughed. “She was still playing the campus? I went looking for her when I went after the Gem of Amara, I thought she and her gang...” he stopped. “Were terrible, terrible blokes. Really, awful. Deserved dust, the lot of them.”

   “Uh-huh,” Buffy said, clearly unconvinced.

   Spike cleared his throat and turned back to Dawn. “That was quite the compliment Buffy just handed you, niblet. Sunday was turned back in the 80's.”

   “Well, so were you!” Dawn teased.

   “Hundred years difference, little bit,” Spike said. “Still, a twenty-year vampire’s nothing to sneeze at. For immortals, most of us dust pretty quick.”

   “Unless they have a wonderful sire to train them up like you!” Dawn said.

   “She’s picked up the art of flattery brilliant,” Spike said, rolling his eyes. “Try again, bit. Show her that move I taught you, with the ankle.”

   “Um... why don’t  _ we _ show her?” Dawn asked. 

   She wasn’t sure why she would rather spar with Spike. She still cared for Buffy, but... she was kinda scary. Buffy looked very different in slay-mode, or in spar-mode, or whatever this was, much more focused and piercing than she was in just practice-mode. Unless, Dawn realized, it was only because she was a vampire now and could really sense that there was something fundamentally different about her sister, something which as Dawn she’d barely even registered, except for Buffy being a certifiable pain in the rear. She wouldn’t have been surprised if it was that, actually, because Dawn could sense lots more as a vampire than she ever could as a mere human being, even with mystical key-mojo and all.

   Like the jack rabbit that was nibbling on the hill by the edge of the park. It was fat on suburban grass, lazy with the scant predators in Sunnydale, but from the few she and Spike had been lucky enough to hunt when she spied them in the graveyards or something, they were damn tasty. Fresh, like the goat, and really fun to chase down. “Spike?” Dawn asked. She pointed.

   Spike grinned. “What is it you’re hunting?” he demanded.

   Dawn rolled her eyes.  _ Always know what you’re hunting before you try and kill it _ was fine, but really only mattered with demons and stuff which all had special rules! “Black-tailed jack rabbit, not endangered, night feeder, and c’m _ on _ , Spike, it’s gonna get away!”

   “Don’t leave the park,” he cautioned.

   “Woo!” Since the park went like a half mile down the creek, Dawn was thrilled. She raced up the hill, and the rabbit raced down it toward the creek, and Dawn played with it a bit, because it was fun to taste the adrenaline, and it screamed when she finally grabbed it, which she  _ loved _ , because that rabbit scream always sounded so human. She bit down and... well, she missed the carotid, but she tried again, and there it was. The rabbit’s little heartbeat pumped itself out into her mouth, and god, blood really was better fresh and pumping from the living. It was a damn shame Spike couldn’t go hunting  _ at all _ anymore. He could chase, but that catch and bite just hurt him. She wished she could get hold of Riley and the rest of the god damn Initiative and rip their bloody throats out for doing that to her sire.

   Dawn drew the last of the warm blood from the limp little body, made sure to wipe her mouth on the beast’s fur, and left the fluffy corpse there for a dog or a buzzard or something to make some kind of use out of.

   Then she went back to the swing sets, to Spike and Buffy.

   But Spike and Buffy weren’t there.

   Dawn could kind of smell them. Buffy’s scent in particular was very strong – Spike had said it would be, as most vampires had learned to recognize it and go  _ the other way _ – and she followed it to the edge of the park, to the graveyard. She knew she could follow, but Spike had  _ specifically _ told her not to leave the park, and she knew they were probably hunting vampires or something, but Spike  _ specifically told her _ . Her hand fidgeted and her foot tapped and she paced the edge of the park a bit, but it wasn’t enough.

_ Break the rules. Just follow. _

   The idea actually hurt. So she did the next best thing. She climbed a tree.

   Branch after branch, sap clinging to her pale fingers, she climbed up a large conifer in the park and looked out over the graveyard, expecting to see Spike and Buffy fighting some gang of vampires that had passed by while she was hunting.

   She did see Spike and Buffy. There were no other vampires.

   And that was not a fight.


	24. Lover

 

   Spike watched as Dawn darted off after her prey, smiling fondly at her enthusiasm. Chasing an animal wasn’t very Dawn-like, but that enthusiasm? That was the girl he’d known. Flung herself into things like a kitten after a bit of string, she did.

   “She didn’t want to kill me,” Buffy said quietly. “She… just wanted to play. Show off.”

He glanced over at her. She looked thoughtful and a little wistful as she stared into the direction Dawn had bounded off in. “Did you really think I’d have brought her out here if I thought she was going to go for your throat?”

“I don’t know. You said you could control her. It’s just… Ange… someone told me she’d want to kill me." 

“Well… at some level, I think she does,” Spike said. “We  _ are _ killers, it’s what we do. But there are more levels than one.”

“Just… I was told it would be uncontrollable. That vampires always want to destroy what they once loved because love hurts them.”

   Spike snorted and shook his head in disgust. Should have figured good old gramps would stick his giant forehead into things. He could tell Buffy it was all a right load of bollocks, but she probably wasn’t ready to hear it. That left one other option that might get through to her.

   “Well, you’re right. All vampires are like that. Just like all vampires are left-handed,” he said decisively. She looked at him like he was crazy. Which wasn’t far off. Bloody Summers girls were both driving him ‘round the bend.

   “Uh, no, no they aren’t,” Buffy said. “Most of the vampires I’ve fought have been righties. Heck, you were even talking earlier about mirroring things because Dawn’s right-handed.”

   “Little bit only  _ thinks _ she’s right-handed, but it isn’t real.” He turned to face her, forcing himself to keep a serious, earnest expression when all he wanted to do was laugh at her adorable befuddlement. He held up his left hand and wiggled the fingers at her. “I’ve been a vampire for over a hundred years, pet. I know all there is to know about ‘em. I’m left-handed, and I’m a vampire, so that means  _ all _ vampires are left-handed. Has nothing to do with the fact that it was the same when I was human, because nothing of our humanity survives.”

   Buffy’s eyes narrowed as she finally cottoned on to what he was doing. “Okay,  _ so _ not the same thing.” 

   “Isn’t it?” Spike challenged. “Yeah, not quite to that extreme, but your ex likes to paint all vampires with his brush. Makes sense, in a way. We’ve all of us – humans, demons, and what have you – our own lenses we look at the world through. Angel’s just happen to be plastered with images of himself that he can’t quite see through.”

   She went quiet at that, her eyes taking on a troubled, faraway look. He wished he could crack open her skull and take a peek, see what was going on in that brain of hers. Maybe he should just drop the subject, let everything alone for a spell. Hadn’t really been all that long since she’d gotten out of hospital, after all.

   “So, vampires aren’t compelled to go after their families?” Buffy asked quietly before he could change the subject. “That’s… that’s just Angel?”

   He could lie to her by agreeing, put it all on Angel, or he could lie to her by backpedaling and claiming he’d just been having her on the entire time. Either way would hurt her one way or another. The truth though…. Bloody hell. He’d opened up a right can of worms with this all, hadn’t he? He sighed and scrubbed at his face with his hands.

   “It’s a mite more complicated than that, love.”

   “Don’t call me that. Vampires can’t love.” The words spilt out of her, like they were something she was desperate to believe and couldn’t quite, not anymore.

   He tilted his head, studying her. He could see it in her eyes. She was afraid. She didn’t want to believe that vampires could love, because that would mean Angel could have loved her when his soul went off on holiday. Could have… but hadn’t, and the chit was insecure enough that she couldn’t lay that blame at Angel’s feet. There was part of him wanted to tell her she was right, that vampires couldn’t love. Let her keep the fragile soap bubble of denial. But he couldn’t do it, and not just because it would ruin any chance he had with her. It would destroy the fledgeling bond she was forming with this new Dawn.

   “Yes. We can,” he said, voice low and deadly serious. He reached out to brush a lock of hair from her face, but she flinched away before he could touch her. “And that’s the problem. I’ve no doubt Angelus killed his family to destroy any trace of love. I’ve no doubt….” He stopped.  _ No, don’t. Not even though you listened to him bragging about his torture, mate, don’t remind her. Oblique, that’s the ticket. _ “I’ve no doubt he did a lot of things because he couldn’t understand love.  Most of us, though?  We’re not feeling like it’s destruction. We’ll go after ‘em because we want to  _ preserve  _ that love.” She had a horrified look, but he kept on. She had to know. “We want to draw it inside, feel the warmth of it. Make them part of us.”

“But that kills them.”

Spike shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. Death doesn’t mean the same to us. I mean, we  _ are _ dead, for us death feels like a gift. And when you’re first turned, you’re high with it. You’re just spinning and giddy and… I mean, you’re a child. Feel, want, take, there’s no real thought to it. But the first emotion is… mine. That’s my family, that’s  _ mine _ . So we’ll take them.”

    “But still love them?”

    “More than ever.” Then he shrugged. “At least that’s the way I always thought of it. But some folks have daddy issues, and obscene commitmentphobia, so I’m sure it seems different to them.”

    The chastising look on her face told him he’d gone a little too on-the-nose there. But then she softened, and frowned. He couldn’t tell if that look was pity or terror. Maybe both. “Was that what it was like for you? Your family?”

    “Nah,” he said quickly. “I mean, we feel the urge, but we don’t  _ have _ to give in to it.” Not that he’d really had much in the way of family to be tempted by. Just his mu- He shook his head, feeling strangely shivery as a sort of buzzing fizzed through his mind. “I had my dark princess, and she was all I needed. One great eternal love was enough for me.”

“But Dawn?”

“She wanted you. She loves her big sis, but she’s controlling it. Way I’ve been raisin’ her, a live sister is going to be a little more appealing than a dead one.”

“So… you’re saying it’s not that you can’t love… it’s just you want to kill whatever you do?”

“I guess you could put it like that. Dru was always hunting out children, or happiness, or both. Angelus went looking for goodness he could destroy. Darla liked to target the sexy.”

“And you went hunting slayers,” Buffy said quietly.

Spike didn’t say anything. She was right…. No real surprise the bitch had him by the short and curlies. 

    Buffy opened her mouth to say something, then looked out past him towards the cemetery across from the park. “Demons,” she said, sounding more relieved than anything else. “I gotta go, you wait here for Dawn.”

    “She’ll be all right,” Spike said, following.

Buffy pushed him back. “Those are polgara, they eat like all the time, I don’t have time to argue!”

    “Then don’t, for once!” he barked. He couldn’t let her just run off on this, he’d never get her talking again!

    They ran across the graveyard after the two reptilian demons, which smelled like rotting human meat. Probably more to do with their diet than anything; he suspected they were in the graveyard digging up dinner. They finally turned to fight, growling and yowling, and Spike and Buffy engaged. Spike’s blood sang as the tension he’d been carrying over the slayer was channelled into the fight. It was a glorious dance, the two of them, a true synergy, a back and forth that needed no words. In fact, words only got in the way. “Careful!” Buffy said as Spike cornered one of the demons by a crypt. “They have bone – ow!” One of the bone spurs she’d been trying to warn him about clipped her in the face as she spoke. 

    “Knew that, slayer, teach your grandmother.”

    Buffy turned and kicked at the creature, breaking off said bone spur, while Spike avoided the issue by attacking his from behind. He broke the creature’s neck while Buffy pulled the same knife she’d used with Dawn and managed a perfect heart-pierce on hers. She backed off when the polgara fell, already bubbling – they didn’t dust as quickly as vampires, but it only took a few hours for a dead polgara on Earth to decay into a puddle of foul-smelling rot, and soak into the ground, leaving only a few choice bone fragments behind. 

    The fight had been exhilarating. Buffy looked up from her kill and stared at him. She was beautiful, hair gleaming in the moonlight, eyes bright from the fight. There was something in her face. Something that almost frightened him, and it wasn’t the gash across her cheekbone, oozing with fresh blood. “Slayer….” 

    That was it. She was The Slayer. He could hear the difference in her heart rate compared to when she’d just been sparring. The sincerity in the  _ kill _ as opposed to merely the fight. She  _ was _ the slayer, she was a killer, just like he was. It was at moments like this, when she was still hot with the kill, when he knew, he  _ knew _ she understood…. 

    He reached out towards her, and this time she didn’t flinch away at his touch. He rubbed the blood away with his thumb, to be replaced immediately by more. Much as he hated to see her bleeding after her suicide attempt, it fit her in this moment. A wild warrior queen flush from battle. He dropped his hand away, and his wrist was suddenly caught in a vice-like grip.

   “My blood,” Buffy said, squeezing just enough to make it hurt. “When I…. Did you taste it?” He jerked back as far as he could with her hold on him, angry and hurt, but she pressed on. “Did you? It was all over you. Did you taste my blood?”

   “’Course I didn’t!” he snapped. After all he’d done, how could she ask that? “You were  _ dying _ , you stupid bint, wasn’t exactly time for a snack.”

    “But you’re a vampire.”

    “Finally caught up, have you?”

    She stalked up at him, quick, predatory, and he backed away again. “Didn’t you want it?”

    A dark shudder crept through him. He stopped, taking a deep breath to try to settle himself and force away the images. Buffy, her body battered and broken at the base of Glory’s tower. Buffy, her spirit battered and broken in that sodding bathtub. “Not you,” he said.

    She pressed him, backing him up further. He found himself glancing at her hand, to see if she was holding a stake. She was  _ really _ frightening him. “What you just said. Vampires want to kill… to take in....” She yanked him back towards her and lifted his hand in front of his face. “You say you love me, don’t you?” she demanded.

   “You know I do,” he challenged. She knew it was real, what he felt. She had to.

   “Then prove it,” she said as if he hadn’t bloody well been turning himself inside out to do just that for over a year now.

   He started to say as much, but the look in her eyes stopped him. Fear. Uncertainty. Vulnerability. At least three men had walked out on her. They had said they loved her, but they left anyway. They’d said the words and even played at some of the actions, but none of them had been true. Not the father with his head too far up his own arse to realize what he had. Not the “great love” that had strung her along before leaving her behind. And not the worthless soldier boy who had claimed she didn’t love him enough because she focused on her mum’s illness instead of kissing his sodding boo-boos.

   He stared at the blood on his hand, then back at Buffy. If his heart beat, it would have been in his throat. As it was, he couldn’t catch the breath he didn’t need. All the kisses and touches, the way she was constantly running hot and cold. He could take it, but this? If she gave him this and then took it away…?  _ Would still be worth it, _ he thought. To taste her, to take her blood inside of him, even it was only a few drops. To have her as a part of him. It would be worth it, even if it never happened again.

   And besides, this wasn’t about him. Not really. She needed something deeper than words, deeper than actions. She needed something raw and primal. He kept his eyes locked on hers as he brought his hand to his mouth and licked away the blood.

   For the briefest fraction of a second, there was the usual coppery taste all blood started out with. But then…. Oh, god, it danced like liquid fire along his tongue. Life and passion and wildflowers blooming in the sun. He needed… he needed….

   He wrapped his other arm around her and pulled her close, and for a moment, he thought he’d gone too far. That she would push him away, call him vile and disgusting, claim there was nothing of love in him. But no. She let go of his wrist so that she could wrap her own arms around him, and she turned her head, not to deny a kiss but to offer up her wounded cheek.

   Spike lapped at her blood like a puss with cream, and it sizzled and sang through his body, setting every nerve ending alight with the warmth and power of her. The first blood he’d had straight from a live human being since before the chip, and it was  _ hers _ .  _ Buffy. _ Her blood inside him while her arms held him close, squeezing to the point of exquisite pain. Her heat, her heartbeat, her  _ life _ , even in this tiny trickle, it still held everything.

   The blood was mostly gone, but he kept probing at the cut with his tongue, giving in return for what he’d taken. No. Not taken. Accepted. He would never  _ take _ , not from her. She writhed against him, the sounds she was making seeming to somehow bypass his ears and jolt straight to his groin.

   Then he was shoved violently to the ground, and everything was a confused welter of aching loss and rejection. She didn’t want him. Just more bloody games, she…. The sound of a zipper, and then before he even had time to gasp she was on him, her hips warm and naked, and this was no game. She bloody meant it. She kissed him hungrily as her hands worked at his belt. His own were roaming her body as he feverishly returned her kisses.

   He lost track of time, of the world, of everything but Buffy. And then his belt was undone and his zipper was down, and she moved, plunging him into the white hot center of her.

   Heat. Power. Strength.  _ Slayer. _ They were barely fifty feet from the kill, and Buffy had just claimed him with a determination that made the most ravenous vampire look bored. “Buffy–”

   She reached her hands up under his shirt, scratching at his chest with her nails, following up with her mouth as she rode atop him, using his body for her own pleasure, and yes, absolutely yes, this was exactly how it was supposed to be. Straddled in a graveyard by a slayer hot from the kill – yeah. He  _ knew _ this was how it would be.

   The raw depth of her hunger, he could see it in her face. He had no idea what was painted on his. Awe, most likely. Awe and terror, because oh, god, what did he have to lose now! How could he go back to unlife after this, as her life and her heat and her power rode him  _ hard  _ into the ground....

   She cried out then, her lustful grunts becoming a full blown yell as she came over him, and he put his hands on her hips and thrust up, because he’d been holding back for – god, from the second she’d jumped him. Her heat, her strength. It was all too much.  _ Buffy, Buffy, Buffy, Buffy. _ Her name echoed through his mind, the very center of his being as he spent himself inside of her. Then he shuddered and went limp, gazing up at her in complete surrender.

   She looked down at him, and the lust and hunger on her face was replaced in a heartbeat by terror. She looked bewildered, as if she wasn’t entirely sure how she’d gotten there, which... that was a laugh. “I... I didn’t....”

   “No, you definitely did, slayer.”

   She shook her head. “I-I didn–” She got up off him, and, _ no _ . No, he was not going to let her run from this. Not now, not ever. He sat up, caught her around the shoulders, pulled her closer.

   “You did.  _ We _ did.” He kissed her softly, grounding her to him, to this moment, to the reality of it. “We did, love,” he whispered again, and then kissed her, over and over, tasting her lips, wandering over her jaw, nibbling at her throat, wandering back up to that naughty little wound and licking the serum off it again. “Buffy... Buffy....” He whispered her name, and she moaned, her back arching.

   Then she pulled away. “Dawn. We should....”

   She was right, dammit, but  _ no _ ! He pushed her forward and her back met a gravestone, and he had her pinned then, on his knees straddling her as she sat, bare-arsed in a sodding  _ graveyard _ . “Don’t run from this,” he told her. “You can’t run from this.”

   She moaned, her expression one of complete abandon as he reached between her legs, and then she shot upright, almost clocking him in the jaw as she rose. “No!”

   “No,” she confirmed. And he realized she was on the gravestone, splayed open for him, and oh, god, yes. He stood and planted himself inside her, trying to go slowly, but oh, god, the slayer was wrapping her legs around his hips and pulling him closer and deeper, and they turned into short, rough little thrusts because he could not do this gently.

   A memory struck him, of another graveyard, and a dark-haired Victorian beauty on another grave stone, her skirts around her ears as he ploughed her, feeling a body around his cock for the first time ever, and he’d had to die to feel it. But this wasn’t Drusilla, cold and distant and mercurial, this was Buffy, Buffy, hot and powerful and here,  _ right here _ , surrounding him. Buffy, as she moaned and writhed and nearly broke him with her strength, but it was perfect. The pain of it, the bruises he already knew she was inflicting, oh, yes.

   He tried an experiment. He grabbed her hard, so hard he  _ knew _ it would hurt her, and... and there was nothing. No twinge from his chip, no fire of electric pain arching through his head, just him and the slayer and their strength between them, and she didn’t even notice that he’d hurt her, she just grabbed him back and pulled him closer, they both moaned again as the power ignited between them.

   They paused after, panting, staring at each other for a long moment, and Buffy swallowed. The terror and denial on her face was replaced by... god, anguish. “Spike....”

   Spike kissed her, held her close. She still had on her blouse, his coat flapped around their legs, though their trousers were off somewhere in the grass beside them, and dammit, if he hadn’t had this fantasy, too....

   “Dawn....”

   “Wait,” he whispered. She was squirrelly, it might be a while (he refused to believe it might be never) before she’d let him do this again, and he was not, he was  _ not _ going to walk away from this without feeding this fantasy at least once.

   He fell to his knees and buried his nose in her soft, slippery folds.

   “Oh,  _ god _ !” She fell back onto the gravestone and didn’t even try to get up again. She tasted of him, yes, but mostly of herself, her sweat and her fresh juices, so human, the musk of her the perfect perfume, the taste of her like blood-fruit. She was whispering his name,  _ Spike, SPIKE, _ and he moaned as he tasted her, as he’d longed to taste her, as he’d dreamed over and over again about tasting her, feeling her writhe beneath his tongue, her moist against his chin, her heat surrounding his head, her hands grappling at his hair. He knelt before the altar of his slayer and worshiped her again and again and again, taking her slick, swollen nub into his mouth and working it with his lips and his clever, hungry, tongue.

   When her screams had turned to whimpers, and even her hands had lost their strength, only then did he release her knees and let her melt bonelessly to the ground. His tongue was sore, and he was glad he didn’t need to breathe. He moved to wipe his chin, but she jumped forward and kissed him, and he knew she could taste herself. 

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered when she let him go.

   He looked down. He wanted to ask what she was sorry for, and realized it didn’t matter. “It’s all right, love,” he whispered back.

   And she was crying. He pulled her against his chest and she sobbed silently, shaking against him as if something had broken. Something... something had. What she’d thought of as herself, maybe, or the resolve she’d had about what they would be, or maybe she just hated herself for being with him? He didn’t know, but he could hold her. That, he knew he could do.

   Finally, even he realized they really did have to get back to Dawn. He wanted to lay his slayer down, kiss away her tears, but he knew that would lead to making love to her again (god, he wanted to make love to her again!) but he really did have to go be responsible parent, and dammit... he wasn’t going to be able to bring Buffy home any time soon. Bloody hell.

   Buffy very quickly shook off her tears and went scrabbling for her jeans, which were somewhere a few graves over. Spike found his – had to take off his boots to get them back on. The two of them were awkward and fumbling, and Buffy refused to look at him. As they headed back through the gravestones Buffy suddenly seemed farther away from him than ever.

   No. No, he was not going to let that happen. Before they got back to the park he stopped, grabbed her by one trailing sleeve, and pulled her behind a tall pillar of a monument. “No,” he said, kissing her soundly. “Don’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

   “It’s... it’s not right.”

   Spike kissed her again. “I love you,” he whispered, trying to put the weight of the world in those three inadequate syllables. “I love you, slayer.” He kissed the already healing wound on her cheek.

   “I-I don’t know if... I mean, you’re evil.”

   “Said I’d turn my back on it,” Spike murmured. “Meant it.”

   “For me?”

   “For you. And Dawn.”

   Buffy pulled away a little and looked up at him. “And what about for you?”

   He was bewildered. “What?”

   “If there was no me. If there was no Dawn, no promises you’d made me. Would you want to be good?”

   Spike felt utterly at sea. Of course he wouldn’t. What was the point of any of it if it wasn’t about Buffy? He didn’t want to be good, or evil, or exist at all if it wasn’t about Buffy. He tried to figure out the best way to put this into words – he’d always been a bloody awful poet, damn things always escaped him when he needed them – when he was saved by a very annoyed teenage voice calling from across the park.

   “Are you guys coming back yet?” Dawn shouted. “I’ve been waiting here like for- _ ev _ -er.”

   “Dawn,” Buffy said.

   “Dawn,” Spike agreed.

   Buffy stared at him for another long moment, and then kissed him, just a peck on the lips. “Later.” Before she headed back towards her vampire sister.

    Later. Buffy had said  _ later _ . Such promise and threat all rolled up into a single word. Spike waited a moment to catch the breath he didn’t need before following. What the bloody hell did she want of him? Did she even know? He’d try to suss it all out later. Right now, there was Dawn. And Dawn was new and hot headed and still learning… everything. Vampire and human and that fine line between. And Buffy, Buffy would help him with that, he knew it. But later…

_ Later. _ Right now Dawn needed them. 

She needed them both. 

 


	25. Partner

 

   Dawn was acting strangely.

   Buffy was all smiles and pretending they were just out slaughtering demons, but Dawn’s laughter seemed forced, and the dark looks she kept throwing him led Spike to believe she wasn’t just pissed off that she’d come back and found the two of them gone.

_  He’d _ have been able to smell what he and Buffy had been up to. Dawn’s sense of smell would be just as keen, but not as developed. She smelled everything, she just didn’t always know what it was. She hadn’t recognized Buffy’s blood on his coat, for instance, just that it was blood. He wondered how much she knew, or how much she guessed, and what she felt about it.

   Finally Buffy said she should get home. Giles was leaving in a few days, and she had a few things she needed to go over with him about the finances.

   “Giles is leaving?” Spike asked. “Again?”

   Buffy sighed. “Yeah.”

   “Why?”

   “He says I should stand on my own. That I need to be strong, and it’s better if he’s not here to step in, and–”

   “Bollocks,” Spike snapped. “You want me to beat some sense into him? Give me a hell of a headache, but–”

   “I could do it!” Dawn piped up.

   “No!” both Spike and Buffy chorused.

   Dawn looked glum. “It’d be fun.”

   Spike and Buffy exchanged looks. Spike opened his mouth to say he’d teach Dawn how to torture without permanently damaging someone some other day, and then decided, no, that wasn’t the kind of thing he should say to Dawn in front of Buffy.

   “Giles is... just gonna do what he’s gonna do,” Buffy said. “Anyway, I should go.” She gave Dawn a hug, and then there was an awkward moment when Spike wasn’t sure if he should try to hug Buffy too, or shake her hand, or just snog her senseless, or what, and she didn’t seem to know, either. Finally she left with a little cringe, as if she was thinking about bowing or something, but couldn’t quite figure out how.

   And Spike was left alone with Dawn.

   Who was suddenly anything but smiles. “You two have fun?” she snarled.

   Spike raised an eyebrow at her. Someone was feeling shirty, apparently. “Well. A couple of polgara demons wandered past. Couldn’t let them get away, now, could we.”

   “You could have waited for me. I’d have liked to kill a demon.”

   “Timing, niblet.”

   She glared. “You just wanted to spend time with Buffy.”

   “Didn’t think I was keeping that a secret, little bit.”

   “Buffy came to see me,” she said. “Not you.”

   Spike couldn’t help but smile, and quickly stepped back, as he realized that would probably only piss the bit off further. “Well. She did see you. And we came back.”

   “Yeah, but I was here for like an hour.”

   “It was forty-five minutes, tops,” Spike said, not at all sure that was true. He had kind of lost track of time. Not to mention space and reality for a bit there. “They were a tough couple of demons to slay.”

   Dawn looked close to tears, and he wasn’t sure why. “But I. Never. See.  _ Anyone _ .”

   Oh.

   “I’ve been keeping you pretty close, niblet,” Spike said. “I’ve been waiting until I could trust you.”

   “Well... what do I have to do to make you trust me?” Dawn asked.

   “I think we’ve hit it,” he said with a grin. “It’s early yet. What do you say you and I go out? Just you and me.”

   “Out?”

   “Yeah. We could walk by the lake, or do a quick patrol of a few other graveyards, maybe hit the Bronze....”

   “The Bronze?” Dawn perked, like he knew she would.

   He laughed. “If you think you’re up to it.”

   “I am so up, pinnacle of, top of the tower!” Dawn said, flustered. “Race you to the crypt!”

   Spike laughed and followed her at a run. They both loved to race.

 

***

 

   Spike sent Dawn down to dress for the Bronze. She came back up in a slinky red dress he didn’t know she even had. Oh, yeah, he remembered. She’d worn it over a pair of jeans once. This time she was sans-jeans, and the skirt was mid-thigh. He was tempted to tell her to go downstairs and put on something more modest until she was older.

   She was never going to get any older. Not physically, anyway.

   “Very nice,” he said. He stood behind her and brushed out her hair, and she stood happily while he did. It was lovely brown hair, finer and lighter than Dru’s was, and it clung to his fingers. He smoothed it down and held out her jacket for her.

   She stood back for him to admire her. “How do I look? Did I get my lipstick on right? You should really get a mirror or something.”

   “No point, love.”

   “Oh... right. Well....” She looked down. “Is it okay?”

   “You look lovely, little bit. Want me to help?”

   “Could you?” She handed him a makeup kit, and Spike told her to hold still while he applied her eyeshadow and blushed up her pale cheeks. “How’d you learn to do eyeshadow?” she asked, when it became clear he was adding shading and layering.

   “Dru and I used to do this for each other all the time,” Spike said. “I actually got better at it than she was.”

   “Like you ever wore makeup.”

   “All the time in the seventies. Eighties, too.”

   Dawn looked up at him. “I’d like to see you in eyeliner.”

   “I looked damn hot.”

   “You would.”

   Spike grinned. Dawn beamed. They went out together. Spike let her sneak up behind him on the motorcycle and hang on to him as he drove them to the Bronze. He didn’t even make her wear a crash helmet, because why bother when you’re basically immune to blunt force trauma? She looked windswept and wild and dangerous as she stepped off the bike. Spike shook his head. The Bronze was in for a picnic with that one.

   Dawn had to have a bracelet strapped around her wrist when they went in, because she looked obviously underage. The Bronze never used to bother with that kind of thing, but things had changed a little since the old Mayor was deposed. Any place like Sunnydale didn’t really attract sticklers for the rules, (as the cockroach collecting parties could attest,) and the old Mayor used to direct the police to turn a blind eye to things like underage drinking, but they’d cracked down marginally in the last few years.

   The place was still thronging with the bizarre mix of high-school and college-kids that really wasn’t usually seen anywhere outside of the hellmouth. Dawn started dancing by herself while Spike got a couple of beers. She seemed to be having fun. Turning had rid her of any sense of shame, so she danced with abandon, silently flirting with boys she’d have blushed and shied away from only a few months before, breaking in on couples and enjoying the jealousy she sparked in the eyes of other girls. Spike found a table on the balcony, out of the way of most of the patrons. He ordered a plate of spicy buffalo wings from the pub-grubber wandering around, and watched his niblet. She caught his eye a bunch of times and danced like she was trying to slide her way out of this dimension and into the fires of hell.

   Men watched her. And not just Spike.

   After a couple of songs, Spike realized that the boy Dawn had been dancing with the most wasn’t really a boy. Or even human. He looked like a college student, and had that distinctly uncomfortable look that most minions got when they had to stay in camouflage too long. Spike let them get on with it, but after a little bit they stopped dancing, and went to sit down at the bar.

   Dancing was one thing. Talking was another. He got down from the balcony and approached them.

   Before he was halfway across the room his vampire ears caught the fledge’s murmur. “I know it. Should we try an ambush, or just ply her with booze and bring her out? I’m sure she’d drink more if I got her chatting with you. You look so innocent... it’s a real gift. I’m impressed.” He slid his hand up Dawn’s bare leg. “Very impressed.”

   “Well, we could just go out the two of us,” Dawn said. “I’d love to get you alone in an alley sometime.”

   The fledge chuckled. “A shared bottle of blood in the moonlight?” he said seductively. “Just you and me, jump one of the girls?”

   “Well, I’m kinda here with someone,” Dawn said. “But...”

   “You got a prospect?” He chuckled. “Blood enough to share?”

   “He’s my sire,” she said quietly.

   “Oh, is that all,” the fledge said. “Well, maybe a couple then. Make sure there’s enough for all of us. Unless your sire’s the jealous type.”

   “I don’t think so,” Dawn said. She was clearly teasing the guy. Oh, god, this  _ was _ a hunt. Just not what the poor bloke thought it was. “Not about me, anyway.”

   “Well. In that case, maybe you can just leave him here and we can have a bit of a snack in the alley. Who do you think we should target?”

   “No one,” Spike said quietly from behind him.

   Dawn glanced up and smiled. She’d known he was watching.

   “Back off, buddy, I’m just talking to the girl,” the fledge grumbled before he looked back. Then his eyes went wide with shock, flashing yellow as he had to force himself to stay in camo.

   “Hey there, mate. Beat it.”

   The vampire looked back at Dawn. “You’re  _ his _ girl?” he said, his tone a mix of incredulous, disgusted, and terrified. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

   Dawn shrugged. “Didn’t think it was important.”

   “Not important!” The vampire stood up and stepped back. “He kills our kind, and you just let me chat you up? Jeeze, you as much a traitor as he is?”

   “Can’t betray what you’ve never sworn an oath to, mate,” Spike said darkly. “Now, you just scamper off home all on your little lonesome. Unless you wanted to take this outside with me.” He stretched and cracked his knuckles.

   “Hell no, man. I’ll... I’ll just take off.” The fledge backed up, delightfully freaked, and made his way through the Bronze to the door.

   Dawn turned back to her soda. “He was nice.”

   “He was evil.”

   “Well, duh!” Dawn said.

   “You can do better than him.”

   Dawn looked over at him with a small smile. “I know I can.”

   Spike chuckled and held out his arm. “Want to dance?”

   “Don’t mind if I do,” Dawn said, took his arm, and went out with him to the dance floor.

   Spike spun her, and twirled her, and moved with her to the music, and she matched him, move for move, because this was something she already knew how to do. Sort of. She was sloppy, of course, and very modern, but the natural grace, that was instinctive. She’d been made from a slayer, and she had the power of a vampire, and she was young and happy and... she really had to stop with that hand on his hip.

   Spike spun her away from him and tried to put her back to where they had been, about half an arm’s length apart, but the music had changed, and she wasn’t having it. She slid up closer and lay her head on his chest, and... okay. That was okay for about a minute. And then her hands slid down beneath his coat, and Spike had to put her away completely. “Dawn, how many times?”

   Dawn glared. “So, you’re allowed to get laid, but I’m not?” she said bluntly. She turned and stalked up to their table, where their buffalo wings were waiting.

   Spike sighed. He’d been afraid of this.

   He followed her and passed her one of his beers. He figured what the hell, she wasn’t actually fifteen. Or human. Or Dawn.

   Dawn swigged at the beer, and made a face. When he didn’t react, she picked up a wing and started gnawing on it, hard enough she broke the bone. She sucked out the marrow viciously, and Spike just watched her, letting her be as vindictively carnivorous as she wanted. When this clearly wasn’t having the desired effect of pissing him off, Dawn dropped what was left of the bone back in the basket and looked daggers at him. “Nothing to say?”

   “So you did notice.”

   “Hard to miss. The two of you weren’t exactly being  _ discreet _ over there,” Dawn muttered. 

   Not being discreet? Aw, hell, she hadn’t just scented. “So you saw.”

   “Yeah,” Dawn said.

   “You okay?”

   Dawn looked down, looking somewhat uncomfortable, and then sighed. “I don’t know. It made me feel weird.”

   “I don’t doubt it.” He didn’t ask how  _ much _ she had seen. Knowing that she was a vampire, rather than innocent Dawn, he was pretty sure she hadn’t modestly decided to give them their privacy. He hadn’t caught her scent, or heard her in the graveyard, so it must have been from a distance, but even so. It must have been like watching a porno. “Enjoy the show?” he finally asked.

   “What, the great Broadway extravaganza of the two of you having obnoxious public graveyard sex?” she asked. Spike held back a smirk. “Why  _ do _ vampires do that, anyway? I’ve always wondered, ever since Buffy’s... thing with Angel. I mean, it’s not like we can have babies or anything.”

   “Residual human behavior,” Spike said. “Much like eating, actually. Not all vamps do it, for some the blood is enough. Or... the kill, really.”

   “And for those who don’t get their jollies from the kill?”

   “Same as with humans. It’s a social bond.”

   “Yeah, but why?”

   Spike lifted his hand in a shrug. “For all the reasons humans have when they’re not trying to procreate.”

   Dawn stared at him. “So love, then.”

   Spike nodded. “Yeah. It’s a bonding behavior.” He couldn’t quite keep the nostalgic smile off his face as he added, “And a very enjoyable one.”

   Dawn rolled her eyes. “And it can’t be for the two of us.”

   “Dawn, I don’t love you like that. I don’t even think you love  _ me _ like that, you’re still learning your new place in the world is all.”

   “Yeah, but... it’s not like I don’t know what it is. I mean Justin–”

   “Was a pillock.”

   “But he showed me what it was. It was fun.”

   “Was it.”

   “Yeah. And it wasn’t any kind of deep bonding behavior. It was just a thing he did, that’s all.”

   “Which goes to show you how much of a monster he was.”

   “We’re all monsters.”

   Spike didn’t like this. “Not always.”

   Dawn sighed. “I just thought it might be fun to get laid. But guess you won’t. Which means I  _ can’t.  _ I mean... how in the hell am I supposed to meet any kind of mate when we dust every other vampire we see?”

   Spike closed his eyes. He’d been seriously hoping she wouldn’t ask this any time soon. “Believe me, niblet, if there was any bugger in the area who was even remotely worthy of you, we’d be chatting him up instead of beating ‘im down.”

   “But there isn’t, is there,” Dawn realized. “There’s just a bunch of dumb-ass lumpy faced minions who can barely think beyond the blood lust.”

   Spike did  _ not _ want to have this conversation.

   “How many vampires like us are there, Spike?” Dawn demanded. “I mean, there’s Angel. Harmony had a gang, and she talked pretty human, so she must have been made not too bad. But she couldn’t hold that gang, and she was never very smart to start with. So she wasn’t really a Big Bad. I... can’t think of anyone else. Maybe that Trick guy Buffy had to fight after you left Sunnydale. And there was Sunday, who gave her some trouble. But other than that? Really, how many are there?”

   “It depends on the area.”

   “Well... yeah, but what’s the ratio or whatever? For vampires like us, versus vampires like them? I mean, one, two, three, I think I’m counting on one hand anyone decent, and we’ve dusted, like, three times that many in just the month I’ve been undead.”

   “It’s complicated, niblet.”

   She wasn’t letting it go. “You said for immortals we mostly dust really fast. Hell, you said  _ I’d _ be killed if I’d stayed the way I was, unless I was like insanely lucky. Is this what you meant? Is being turned really just dying with a short delay? What’s the usual life span for a vampire?”

   “If you’re not killed, niblet, it’s forever.”

   “But what if we  _ are _ killed? How often does that happen? We’ve been dusting guys left and right. Teeth seemed to think his minions were expendable, only annoying to lose because of how much blood he’d paid for them.”

   “Minions are like that.”

   “That’s what you said,” Dawn said. “That every other vampire you ever made you used like tools, and you dusted.” She made the leap he’d been hoping she’d miss. “It’s not just us. Vampires  _ all _ kill each other, is that it?”

   “Yeah, actually, it is. Unless you’re some daft Aurelian, or stupidly social like Harmony. We gang up, we have have little wars, and we kill each other. Over territory, over mates, over our place in a gang. We’re violent creatures, we like to kill. It’s what we do.”

   “If that’s what we’re made to do, how the hell are there any vampires left around at all?”

   “Niblet, you’re really young for all this,” Spike said, hoping to god she’d just let it go. “When it becomes important, I’ll talk to you about it. In the meantime, you just have to learn what  _ you  _ are.”

   “That’s what I’m trying to do,” Dawn said. “I’m a vampire. I need to know how we work. Why haven’t we all killed each other off yet?”

   “It doesn’t matter, bit. You and I, we’re different. We’re stronger, we’re... better.”

   She wasn’t distracted, or impressed. “It’s because we breed fast, isn’t it. Because we don’t need a mate to breed, and even the weakest of us can turn a hundred others in a night.”

   “It would probably take a few days for that,” Spike said. “And they’d be crap with that fast a turnaround.”

   “But what’s that matter when the fledges aren’t supposed to live?” Dawn said. “You know what else breeds fast? Mice.”

   He should never have let her keep those damn kittens. “You’re not a mouse, little bit.”

   “But I was made by one, wasn’t I? Justin was a mouse, batted around and toyed with by  _ you. _ ” She leaned back in her chair. “That’s what I was supposed to be. A feeder mouse. Just fodder, legs broken for some other predator to play with. Someone stronger, and better. I was supposed to be expendable, either paid off like a thug by some guy like Teeth, or running wild in a gang like a pack of dumb dogs.”

   “Yeah, well, you aren’t, now, are you,” Spike said.

   “No. Now I’m like you. But where does that leave me? Too human not to care, and too monster to be anything else.”

   Spike looked away. The realities of their race were ugly and painful. It wasn’t just blood and peaches. It was dust and death and terror. From everyone. The sunlight, human beings, other vampires. Slayers.

   “Where does that leave me, Spike? Alone like you? At least you had Drusilla!”

   “And she made me pay for it!” Spike snapped.

   “Yeah, but I’m paying, too! You’re all in love with Buffy. Well, good for you, but what the hell have I got? What chance do I have?”

   “Niblet–”

   “How many decent vampires are there in Sunnydale?” Dawn asked. “Five? Ten? Or am I right, and it’s just us two?”

   “Dawn, I told you, there’s a slayer here. Vampire. Slayer. The warning’s in the title.”

   “A slayer who took out the only other old vampire you mentioned, who was, what? Twenty? That’s a really short lifespan, Spike, and you yourself said even that was nothing to sneeze at.”

   “Well, you’re better than all them, yeah? You’re already ahead of the game.”

   “Leaving me where?” Dawn demanded. “A college student trying to find a date among a bunch of toddlers? Toddlers I keep staking, no less!”

   “Dawn, keep your bloody voice down!” Spike hissed.

   “Immortality’s a joke, isn’t it,” Dawn said. “Is this what you saved me for? For a life of loneliness and exile? Not human, so they’re out. Too much better than other vampires, so they’re not worthy of me. And hell, I’m not even a proper vampire ‘cause I’m not supposed to kill people. I mean, what is that?”

   “Complicated,” Spike said.

   “So complicated any other Big Bad is gonna think I’m some kinda deviant. You might as well have neutered me, same as you!”

   Spike slammed his hand down on the table and glared at her. “Shut it,” Spike said. “Just. Shut it.”

   Dawn shut. For a moment. Then she tilted her head down and glared at him, and bloody hell, it was breaking. He could see it in her eyes. The minion hold didn’t always work long with a strong personality, and Spike had made her as strong as he could. He was only half her sire. He should have expected this. But there were other bonds. He softened his dominance and reached his hands out for her. “Dawn, niblet, listen.”

   “I don’t want to listen,” she said, snatching her hands away. “I’m done listening.”

   “No. You’re not,” Spike said firmly. He took in a deep breath. “Look. I’m not going to pretend it’s easy. Most fledgelings  _ do  _ die. And should die. This is how the strong survive, this is why elders are always the Big Bad, this is how it  _ works _ . And you’re lucky, love. We come from a rich bloodline, Master of those old Aurelians, he’d been around forever. He made Darla like his daughter, so he fed her strong. She made Angelus as her consort, so she wanted him worthy. Dru was Angel’s masterpiece, she was a powerhouse under all that madness.”

   “And you?”

   Spike looked down. He didn’t want to admit what Angel always said he really was – Drusilla’s toy. “I was her dark knight,” he said softly. “You’re my niblet. I fed you up right, ‘cause I wanted you  _ safe _ . All right? I wanted you to be above all that... death. You pass through death fast enough, and you can find a _ life _ , you hear me? That’s what I wanted for you, for you to have a  _ life _ .”

   “But this isn’t a life. My life ended.”

   Spike closed his eyes, trying to find something to say to that.

   He wasn’t fast enough. “You’d rather I didn’t exist,” she realized. “You’d rather you still had Dawn, human and breathing. That’s what you wanted.”

   Spike opened his mouth.

   “Don’t lie to me,” Dawn said low.

   “I’d have given my life to save yours,” Spike said. “You know that.”

   “To save  _ hers _ ,” Dawn snapped.

   “I’d give it again to save yours,” Spike said. “I don’t know what more you want from me.”

   “Yes, you do!” Dawn said. “I’ve  _ said. _ ”

   “That’s not why I made you.”

   “So because you don’t want that, I don’t get any. I’m doomed to live like this alone, right?”

   Spike looked down.

   “Maybe I’ll just have to make my  _ own _ consort,” Dawn said. “Find some cute guy, make him fall for me, turn him as my own minion. Feed him up right, keep him–”

   Rage blossomed through him in a way he couldn’t even begin to understand. He bolted up from the table with a growl, grabbed Dawn by the hair, forced a hand over her mouth to cover her squeak and dragged her to the darkest corner of the balcony. He slammed her against the wall and kept her quiet with his hand around her throat, cutting off all possible air.

   “Is that what you want?” he hissed into her face? “Is it? Well, let me tell you, niblet, you want to kill, you kill! You go right ahead. But you better kill me first. You’ll have to. I will stake you myself, you hear me? You choose what you want, me dust, the slayer after you, and some fucking minion of your own? Because if you just want to murder some poor boy so that you can get laid proper, I will end you. This isn’t a game. This is life and death, and I love you, but I will dust you if I have to, you hear me?”

   Dawn eyes were wide with terror. Spike was tempted to break her ugly neck and drag her limp body back to the crypt to sit in a wheelchair until the demonic energies stitched her spinal column up again. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to beat her against the wall until she turned into Dawn again, but he knew he couldn’t. Dawn was dead, she was dead, she was dead, and this thing that was left in her body wasn’t the little girl he’d loved. He’d thought he could love her again, and he did, but this... this was so ugly, and so wrong. It poisoned the beauty of Buffy’s sweet scent and her warm body and everything he wanted, and made it sordid and... and evil. Dammit, Dawn wasn’t supposed to be evil!

   He let go her throat. “Back to the crypt. Now.”

   Dawn sank to her knees, gasping. She wasn’t used to being without air.

   Spike felt bad. He wanted to catch her up and tell her how sorry he was, but... no. His hold was breaking, he’d have to stay strong now or he’d lose her completely. Any other minion he’d had he’d have staked after this, this open defiance she’d developed. She looked up, her hair still knotted from where he’d grabbed it.

   “Get out of my sight,” he said.

   Dawn crawled, and then climbed to her feet, and then fled, near falling down the stairs, plunging through people, almost mowing them down as she pushed across the dance floor, making people stare. She burst through the door and out into the night.

   Spike clenched both fists and grimaced. Something was worming through his head, something stronger and uglier than the chip, and he wanted to scream with it. Drink. That’s what he needed, something to drink. He almost jumped off the side of the balcony, but no, that would draw too much attention, and he  _ needed _ to keep the Bronze. He wished he was still whole. Any time he’d felt like this before the chip he’d have had an orgy of slaughter, just pour himself into the crunch and the blood and disappear into the joy of it. He staggered to the bar, already feeling the wrong kind of drunk, and told them to pour him the highest proof liquor they had. He shot it down and patted the bar for another one.

   He wasn’t drunk yet. He had to get there  _ fast _ , this was taking too long. He was frightened of what would happen if he didn’t start buzzing this instant. This wasn’t Willy’s. What he needed was a sodding liquor store, he was going to beggar himself if he tried to get drunk on these ten-dollar-shots, but he didn’t care. He grabbed the bottle off the bartender and threw a bill at him, which was probably the c-note he’d been planning on using for blood this week, but hell, Dawn could hunt, he’d find her a damn coyote pack or something, and he could just go hungry. He needed the liquor lots more than he needed to eat.

   He took the bottle into the darkest corner of the room, in a shadow off the stage, right next to the speakers, so the music and the bass could hum through him, take him away from whatever was surging through his brain, this thing that Dawn kept trying to resurrect, which he did  _ not _ want to meet. He didn’t know why it frightened him so, but he was terrified of it.

   Another pulse of the bass, another swig of the bottle – he dug his black nails into the back of his wrist, and there, yes. Another shot of pain. Anything, anything but thinking. He could go to Buffy, let her drown out – no. No, don’t expose her to this, whatever this is. He forced more liquor down his throat.

   God, that fucking little bitch puppy. He wished he’d never found her.

 

 


	26. Body

 

 

   Dawn was crying as she fell from the bright, hot, cacophony of the Bronze into the chill silence of the night outside. Spike. Spike, Spike had just... he’d just.... She swallowed down the terror and the pain and, yes, the horror of what she’d done and staggered into the alley outside the Bronze. Why the hell was the entrance to the Bronze in an alley? Whose idea was that? Why not open the hottest night-spot in Sunnydale into some bright thoroughfare where people could get into their cars quickly and get home safely?

   Not that the fact that the structure of Sunnydale seemed made to quietly funnel victims to their final resting place helped Dawn at all.  _ She _ wasn’t allowed to hunt victims.  _ She _ was the daughter of the neutered Big Bad who had a thing for the Slayer.  _ She _ was the Slayer’s sister, and had the rules hovering over her shoulder every god damned second, so her own vampiric birthright was denied her.  _ She _ wasn’t allowed a decent boyfriend because... because... because....

   She couldn’t even put her finger on why or what.

   Spike wasn’t wrong, exactly. She didn’t think she loved him the way he loved Buffy or anything. But... that didn’t stop her from wanting something more. But what and why, she didn’t know, and everything just felt  _ wrong _ when she thought about it. And it seemed to her as if Spike could set it right, but he wouldn’t, so everything was still wrong. Very wrong. So very wrong.

   And what had she done? She’d defied him again. She couldn’t believe it, she hated herself for it. She stood in the alley and panted and hugged herself. There was Spike’s motorcycle. The one he’d jousted a fucking demon to get, just so that he could protect her... or the other her. The her she used to be. The human her he  _ really _ loved, not the demon she’d been turned into, that he was settling for, but didn’t really want, because he had Buffy.

   Ugh! She had to stop thinking about this. She scratched her nails down her arms – black nails, like his, scratching down black leather, that he had gotten her. She pushed back her hair – hair that he brushed like her mom used to do. God! What the fuck did she  _ want?!? _

   And a noise that sounded a lot like what she wanted came from down the alley. A sudden scream, followed by whimpering gruntings of terror. “Help!” a female voice called from around the corner. “Help, help!”

   Dawn pulled the stake out of her jacket pocket. It fit there perfectly; no doubt this was why Spike had picked out this specific jacket for her. She spun the stake in her hand, slid it slightly up her sleeve so it wasn’t visible, then went down the alley, to play the slayer. Spike’s little fledgeling, killing her own kind. A kill was a kill was a kill. She was desperate to kill something.

   There was that college boy she’d been flirting with earlier, the fledgeling vampire who had turned every single thing she’d said into another way or reason to kill. She’d just been... checking. Checking to see if there was anything else in his head but death. There hadn’t been. Spike was right.

   The fledge looked up from the girl he’d managed to grab. She was young, this girl. Dawn thought she might have been a junior at the high school, thought she’d seen her a few times. The vampire had already gotten his teeth into her, and she was struggling. He looked up. “Hey,” he said. “You decided you wanted to join in after all?”

   “You suck at this,” Dawn said. “Seriously? You just grab and bite? The carotid is  _ here _ ,” she pointed on herself. “The jugular’s _ here _ . Didn’t you ever check your own pulse when you were alive?”

   “Hey, that was three damn years ago, and I didn’t give a shit then,” the fledge said. The girl whimpered and struggled. “Are you gonna help me, or do I have to clear you out?”

   “You need _ help _ ?” Dawn asked. “You’ve survived three whole years, and you need help to kill that thing? How long does it take you to kill?”

   “Huh?”

   “You’re so damn dumb you can’t even do the one thing you’re made for,” Dawn said. “Totally lame.”

   “Help me!” The girl struggled.

   “Working on it,” Dawn snapped. “Seriously, did you ever study? Or do you just keep chomping, hoping the chick will die through sheer luck?”

   The fledgeling glared at her with his yellow eyes. “You were a lot cuter when you didn’t sound like my gym teacher.”

   “You were a lot cuter with your mouth shut, too,” Dawn said. She kicked him in the head.

   The fledgeling fell backwards, cracking his head against the brick wall. He let his prey fall and came up growling, his fists clenched. Dawn didn’t even bother vamping out. One, two, three kicks and he was pushed back, blow, blow, and he was dizzy. She stopped and let him get a couple of hits in, like Spike usually did, because he was right, the fight was boring if you didn’t play with them a bit. Buffy did that, too – warming up, Spike called it, when she did it. He didn’t think she liked toying with things, even vampires. Dawn wasn’t so sure.

   The guy was three years old, and she still outclassed him. It pissed her off. Here she was, an exquisite fledgeling of the greatest Big Bad in Sunnydale, and she was what? Willfully castrated, lonely, and unsatisfied.

   But she was still a goddamn killer! She gave the boy a roundhouse kick and sent him crashing back into the wall. “ _ You _ ,” she said, punching him hard, “are  _ not – worth  _ – my  _ time _ .” She grabbed him by the throat and held him up. “Do you know what you are, mate?” she growled. She spun her stake, held it up, and plunged it into his chest. “You’re a mouse.”

   He was dust before she’d even finished saying it.

   Damn. His dust took the stake. She hated it when that happened. She brushed the dust off her leather sleeve and glanced back at the girl. “You can go home, now,” she said. She wished the girl had just left during the fight, the scent of her blood was intoxicating.

   The girl didn’t move.

   “Hey,” Dawn said. “I said you’re safe, you can fucking go.”

   She still didn’t move.

   Dawn didn’t want to admit that she couldn’t hear a heartbeat. She kicked the girl to start her up again. “Hey. Get up. I killed the damn fledge, you’re free.”

   The girl’s head lolled far too easily. Her brown eyes stared glassily at the night sky. Dawn gulped. She’d been too late... she’d spent too long bantering with that fledge, and he’d killed her... somehow he’d killed her, broken her neck, something. She wondered if that crack she’d heard when his head had met the brickwork had been more than just his skull.

   There was a moment of terrified little girl, wondering, _ What do I do? Do I start CPR? Call the police? Just scream for help? What? _

   Then there was a moment of the newborn or minion or whatever it was Spike called it.  _ Do I go get Spike? _

   Neither of them were very strong. The blood stained the girl’s throat, and the scent was like a hand grabbing Dawn by the jaw, it was  _ right there _ . She trembled. But... it... it wasn’t as if she’d killed the girl, right?

   The minion in her said again,  _ Get Spike. This is a lot of human blood, and if you get caught, it won’t matter that you didn’t kill her. It’ll look like you did. _

   And even before she’d finished the thought she was on her knees, and lifting the still warm body into her arms, and pressing her fangs to its throat. She bit down all the way to the carotid – and she didn’t miss. Not with this big a target. The blood gushed. That dumb fledge had only been gnawing on her musculature, the artery was still completely untapped. There was no heartbeat, though. Dawn had to suck and suck and suck to pull it inside, but the blood was still fresh, it was  _ fresh _ , it was warm and fresh and there was  _ so much of it _ ! Nothing like those dumb little rabbits, and nothing dull and bitter like the dog. This, this, this....

   This was everything.

   The blood filled her mouth, poured hot down her throat, made her tongue into a white-hot knot of pleasure. She wondered, idly, if this was what the clitoris was supposed to feel like, if she ever made the thing work properly, but that was a very passing thought, because she was too busy feeling  _ awesome _ ! This wasn’t exactly sexual, at least, she didn’t think it was. But it was very physical. Undeniably sensual. 

   She found her whole body was getting into the feeding as she sucked and swallowed, sucked and swallowed, pulsing and pulling and holding the warm corpse against herself, until she couldn’t pull anymore. Her tongue was sore. She lifted her head, found she could open her eyes again, stared into the filthy alley, at the dumpster across the way, and everything was beautiful, the taste of the blood was still on her tongue, and... and... no! She wasn’t finished yet!

   She plunged back toward the corpse, lifting it against her mouth, leaning back against the brick and shaking the body, breaking bones in her desperation to squeeze more and more out into her mouth. Her shoulders shook, her hips even convulsed, she wrapped herself around the heavy thing, as if she’d absorb all of it through every part of herself. It was wonderful, it was dead blood, but it was  _ so damn fresh. _ She was humming with pleasure, her throat and her whole body, more, more, how the hell was she supposed to stop? But her stomach was full, distended, aching, even. She looked up from the corpse and looked down into its pale, blue face, and kissed its forehead, its lifeless lips. She was in love. This thing was hideous and exquisite and she hated it and loved it, and...  _ more! _

   Dawn lost track of how many times she tried to stop and couldn’t, how hard she had to pull to get more blood. When the carotid stopped yielding she went for the brachial in the arm, and then the other arm when that one dried up, and then back to the other side of the throat, to see if she could get just a few more drops out, and then she was just nibbling, anywhere, hoping for a few more mouthfuls.

   And a vampire sat in the middle of a filthy alleyway, biting over and over again on a spent corpse, and Dawn sat a little outside herself and watched this... a little bewildered.

   Finally the vampire stopped, gasped, moaned with spent pleasure, and sank down on her back on the pavement.

   Dawn blinked, staring up at the dark sky. A few stars peeked out from around the clouds, and a watery moon tried to slice through them, but often failed. Dawn just stared, still as the corpse beside her, full, too full, her stomach aching, but her body  _ roaring _ as the blood poured through her, demonic energies taking it from her stomach and sending it racing through her body in a steady, pulseless stream. She gasped now and again, and giggled even, as the blood hit her fingertips, made it down to her toes, made her whole body tingle with life. She laughed, then laughed louder, finally howling with hysteria as she realized she was warm. Warm for the first time since she’d died, she was warm from the inside out, she felt  _ alive _ .

   A very small voice inside her said,  _ Okay, now you’d  _ definitely  _ better get Spike. You’re really young, that was a lot of blood, you’re not gonna be able to handle this. _

   But unfortunately that had included the words  _ get Spike, _ and they sounded good. “Get Spike,” she said quietly. They sounded very good, those words. “Get Spike. Heh.” She chuckled. Mm. This was _ nice _ . Oh, yeah, this was wonderful. This was reeeally good ssstuff, that. Oh, yeah. She wasn’t s’posed to kill, which no, no, bad idea, but maybe she could hang around the hospittle and things? Wait for someone else to die maybe? ‘Cause that was jussst reeeally nice.

   Dawn sat up. “Oh, yeah. Body. Um. Huh.” Oh, look, there was a dumpster. “Tha’s convenient. Whoops!” She picked the bite-marked body up and tossed it inside, where at least it wouldn’t be her problem when it was found. Mm. Now there was blood on her jacket. Well, that was solvable. She licked at it, and nearly fell over. Her stomach sloshed.

   “Damn.” She realized she was gonna be in  _ all _ kinds of trouble if Spike caught her like this. Or if Buffy caught her like this. Spike would beat her up. Buffy would probably stake her. But hell, it wasn’t as if she’d killed anyone, right? Just found a tasty bloody cheeseburger abandoned in the alley, and why waste the blood, right? Of course right. Buffy would totally buy that. It was the truth, why wouldn’t anybody buy that? But still, no real point in getting caught at it. She should go home, back to the crypt, climb down and get squirted by that spigot in the sewer, so Spike wouldn’t smell the blood on her. Yeah, he’d smell it, he would, and he’d be pissed, but she’d make sure that wasn’t a big deal.

   She staggered home, flushed, sated, grinning, humming, her stomach still sloshing with warm blood. “Get Spike,” she murmured to herself. “Get. Sssspike....”

 


	27. Daughter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter is disturbingly graphic and almost tipped this whole story into Adult Only.

 

 

   Spike stumbled in after stashing the motorcycle behind the bush outside the crypt. He’d had to stop and walk the bike a few times, because he was a little too drunk to drive, even with vampire senses. His head ached, and his eyes hurt, and he’d damn near deafened himself hiding behind that speaker, but it had been worth it to drown out whatever it was that was pulsing in his head that he didn’t want to think about, which was probably just Dawn/not-Dawn, with Buffy thrown in.

   Buffy. Buffy.... He smiled. Buffy was a lovely thing to think about, think about Buffy. Buffy.... He almost sobbed with the beauty of the memory, the power of it, the strength in her arms, the raw passion in her kiss. He wished he could have just said sod a dog and gone home with her, or dragged her back to the crypt with him, made love to her all bloody night, torn his crypt apart with the power of their love, but... Dawn/not-Dawn who felt weird about it, and dammit, he wished he had made her a room with a door.

   Maybe he should put her bedroom in the upper chamber? Ach, but that wasn’t as secure, and if there  _ was _ an invasion, he wanted them both close to the escape routes, or at least the bolt-holes under the coffins and behind the walls. Had to keep his niblet safe, he did. It was important. Couldn’t let nothing happen to her, she was important, to the end of the sodding world.

   Though he’d already buggered that up, he had, but Buffy thought he’d done right, he’d done good, he’d saved what Dawn’d left, made it better, made it strong, and yeah, Buffy thought he’d done right. Buffy was glad of it. Buffy could love him. Buffy could love him, she could love him, he had his crumb, his crumble, he’d had a whole bloody slice of double-fudge-chocolate-devil's-food-cake, with blood icing all soaking into the sponge, and thank god he’d found that thought again. He’d found it in the music and the liquor and the night and the memories. He’d missed it that hour when not-Dawn had stolen it away from him.

   But she was also Dawn-bits and they were beautiful, wonderful niblet bits, and god, he loved her. He half fell down the ladder and went to check on her, like he always did when he got in, always, had to make sure she was safe, he did, he did, always. There she was, curled up in her coffin, her hair wet from a shower, looking as pink and plump and healthy as if she were still alive, the sweeting. If he hadn’t been drunk he’d have snuck in and kissed her forehead, but he was pretty sure he’d wake her, ‘cause he was pretty sure he’d stumble, and she deserved her sleep, the pretty thing.

   He’d almost forgotten how they’d left the Bronze, the little tiff they’d had, it wasn’t important. And the girl had a point. Maybe she  _ did _ deserve to have a consort or something. He was castrated, so he couldn’t make her a partner, not even for some bugger about to die of cancer like that idiot Ford, a soul already on its way out, ‘cause even Buffy couldn’t bitch too much about that kinda thing. (Though, you know, he’d probably ask her first, because not going to risk this devil's-food-slayer-hotness-dessert-Buffet. He laughed at the thought of a Buffy Buffet.)

   But, you know, maybe there were vampire personals out there on the internet somewhere. He didn’t have much use for computers – the sodding things changed so fast. He’d gotten to know them pretty well at one point in the seventies, and then again in the late eighties, and then he’d abandoned them again, because technology, technology was all bastards thinking too fast. He could just about poke around on one, these days, but he could learn it all proper again. Go off on the world wide webberverse thing they all went on about, find the vamp-forums, look for someone sweet for her. Maybe someone turned in the seventies who thought evil was getting flat dull. Some of the punk scene were decent blokes. But no... no, too much trouble, if they already thought they were the Big Bad.

   No. Better to feed up some really cute idiot minion. He didn’t like the idea, he didn’t want any more family of his own, but there had to be something. Or maybe some other kind of demon? Clem wouldn’t appeal, but there were some Herne demons who were just antlers without the slime, and hell, even the slimy ones had appealed to Drusilla, yeah? Drusilla... Dru.... He chuckled as he kicked off his boots and collapsed into bed. Drusilla.  _ You’re all covered with her, _ she’d said. Well, he was now. He smelled like slayer....

   He’d smelled like slayer the night she... she got hurt, too, but that wasn’t the same. He’d been all covered with her then, but now, now he smelled like her sweet hair and her salty sweat and he could still feel her sticky under his clothes, and he never wanted to shower again, if he could just keep smelling like Buffy.

   Buffy.... He closed his eyes and dreamed, like he always dreamed, about Buffy, only this time he knew how much sweeter the reality was....

 

***

 

   He was being kissed. A pair of sweet lips were kissing his throat, as a heavy body stretched out beside him. He moaned happily, because it was good, and he snuggled his head down to catch Buffy’s scent better. “Buffy....”

   She said nothing, just slid a strong arm across his chest and down his side, and he hummed and took in a deep breath and tried to put his arm around her. And it was stopped by chains. Which... okay, kinky, but he didn’t remember this. He didn’t think he’d been  _ that _ drunk. And that wasn’t Buffy’s scent. He blinked his eyes open to find a naked body stretched along the length of him, her head snuggled into his shoulder, and that hair was brown not blonde. 

   “Bloody hell!” He tried to sit up, and found himself chained pretty damn securely to his own damn _ bed _ . The old metal frame beneath the mattress creaked. “Dawn!”

   “Shh,” Dawn said. “I’m snuggling.”

   “What the hell are you doing?”

   “I just told you, I’m snuggling.” She looked up. “I’m going to get Spike.”

   He struggled against the chains. Hand and foot, and the buggers were tight. And strong enough to hold him, too. The chains were familiar – the ones he’d kept of Dru’s – and if he’d woken every time Drusilla had wanted to chain him up during the day, he’d have never slept a wink. The fact that he was a heavy sleeper, especially when dreaming of Buffy, and had been a little drunk probably hadn’t helped any. That all explained  _ how _ Dawn had been able to do it, but not the why. He’d bloody well  _ told  _ the chit he didn’t want this!

   “Let me go!” he told her. “Now.”

   “I will. Eventually.”

   “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?” he snapped. “I’m your sire, now get the hell off!”

   “I know you’re my sire,” she murmured huskily. “And I know how this works. I see it better than you do. Darla made herself a consort. So did Dru. That’s what sires are for, to make your own mate. It’s obvious.” She sounded like she was trying to be logical, which – this was the least logical thing he’d ever seen. “You’re the one who’s got a complex or something about the slayer. But I can fix that.” She slid her hand down to his hip and then slid it over his jeans and–

   “No!”

   “You don’t get to say  _ no _ ,” Dawn said with a wicked grin. “I get to do what I want. That’s what the chains are for.”

_ “You don’t get to say no.” Darla’s words from long ago. “We’re family, you see. Dru’s toys are my toys. And  _ my  _ toys are whores.” She smiled with wicked joy while Angelus laughed from somewhere nearby. “But you’re not a whore, are you, boy? You’ll be a good little slut and give it to me for free.” _

  Eeugh. Not one of his more pleasant memories, and the fact that Dawn was the one bringing it to mind…. He shuddered and tried, uselessly, to twist away from her pawing hands. This wasn’t like her. This wasn’t Dawn.

   “Dawn, I am going to get really bloody pissed off in a minute, and you are going to regret this–”

   “Shh,” she said, putting a hand over his mouth. “I’m learning you.” 

   Learning him? That’s what you did with…. No. No, no, no. This wasn’t happening. Not even as a one off, and most definitely not as something more. The thought of it made his skin crawl and his head ache while something… something…. He tried to bite her hand, hoping the pain would bring her to her senses or at least get her off him for a bit. No such luck. She pulled her hand away, completely unworried.

   “You think I don’t know what you want?”  _ You wanted your hands on me.  _ Who had…? That voice. No, no, no. “You think I wasn’t listening to you, moaning away in your sleep, crying out  _ Buffy, Buffy _ ? What do you think that did to me, all alone in my coffin over there? How do you think I’ve felt all these weeks, confused, abandoned, beat up a lot? When I heard you talking about her blood, covered in her, covered in her blood, that’s right, Buffy. Chains. Let me be your minion.” Dawn chuckled. “You want the Big Bad. Well, I can do that.” She sat up and arched her back to show off her slender, developing body. “You made me so I can do that.”

   “Shut it! I don’t want this!” Phantom hands, touching, trying to caress. God, no. No, no, no. These weren’t memories of Darla or even Angelus. This was… this…. What was this? It had to stop. He wanted it to stop.

   “I don’t care about what you want,” Dawn said, rubbing his chest again. She started to nibble on his neck, and he tried to force her off by squeezing her out against his shoulder, but she just started nibbling on his jaw, and then his ear. She drew in air she didn’t need, just to send it back out in a flutter behind his ear, sending tingles of obscene pleasure skittering through his entire body. “I care about what  _ I _ want. And I want  _ this _ .” She moaned evocatively, and it made him feel sick. “I mean, look at this.” 

   She rolled over and straddled him, and he tried to avert his eyes from her naked form, but the weight of her body atop him, he couldn’t avert that. And his body bloody  _ responded _ , traitorous thing. Just like before, when…. No, no, no. Darla’s voice in his head again –  _ All that talk about being faithful to Dru, but look at this. I couldn’t do this if you didn’t want it.  _ – distracting him from the dark  _ thing _ hovering at the edge of his mind.

   “Wandering around, flashing this beautiful thing, in my own lair? How the hell is this fair, keeping this from me?”

   “Dawn, listen, this isn’t–”

   “A girl has needs, Spike. Real needs, and I deserve to have these needs  _ met _ .” She undulated over him, and his jaw spasmed. “I love you, Spike. I love my sire, I just want to make you feel good.”

   “I’ll feel best you unchain me, you bloody cunt!”

   She looked hurt, but not hurt enough to not want him. “You’re just trying to be good for Buffy. But what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her, and being good is overrated. Come on, you know that. Evil is where it’s at. We’re evil creatures, we see what we want, and we take it.” She kissed at his chest. “Blood. Bodies. The Big Bad knows what it deserves.” She looked up, grinding herself atop him. “And I. Deserve. This.” 

   She tore at his t-shirt and – god! He’d had this fantasy a thousand times, but the one in the role wasn’t supposed to be  _ Dawn _ , it was Buffy he wanted there! He made a despairing sound and clenched his teeth. No, no, no. Please, God, no. Didn’t matter how his body was reacting. He didn’t want this. He knew he didn’t.  _ You sure about that, now, Willy?  _ An ugly little voice in the back of his head.  _ Seems you’re fairly well into it, boyo. _

   “Please,” he whispered. His niblet was in there somewhere. She wouldn’t do this to him. If he could just reach her…. “Don’t do this, little bit, come on. Just get off me.”

   “No,” Dawn said – no, not Dawn. Not-Dawn. Not his little bit – doing things with her body again that made his feel good and made the rest of him want to retch. “I’m not a little bit anymore. I’m a beautiful, virile vampire, and I want you. I’m gonna make you want me, dammit.”

   “Just stop. Just stop a minute, sit back, we can talk about this.” She wasn’t stopping. Why wasn’t she stopping? Not-Dawn. A  _ thing. _ “Bloody hell, you wretched bitch, get off me!”

   “You can scream all you like,” Dawn said. “Front door’s locked. No one can hear you.”

   Familiar words. He used to say shit like that. “Why are you doing this?”

   “Because I want to!” Not-Dawn whined, and she kissed her way down his bare chest.

   She felt warm.... Not alive, but warmer than she should be. And she looked awfully pink, and that wasn’t just the rouge. “Dawn?” The realization horrified him. He’d failed her. He hadn’t had enough hold on her, and he’d failed Dawn, brought out more of not-Dawn. His fault this was happening. “Dawn, did you kill someone?”

   “No,” she said. “Another vampire did, I just didn’t save her in time.”

   “But you fed,” Spike said.

   “Well, yeah, why waste the blood?”

  Girl had a point, but Buffy wasn’t going to see it that way, and  _ fuck. _ She was young, she wasn’t at all used to it, and she’d probably sucked down the whole damn thing. Well, that explained her extreme vampire behavior, but didn’t actually get him off this bed, and she was writhing over him again, and god. God! “Get off me, please!”

   “Aww,” she said, sounding so sympathetic. “It’s gonna be all right! I won’t tell Buffy, and we can just enjoy each other, okay? I’ll show you, I’m not a child, I’m a Big Bad like you. I have my own boss factor, and I know what I want, and I know what I’m doing, and you’ll like it.”

   “No!”

   “I’ll make you like it. Come on, you like it already,” she said, rubbing herself against what she thought was proof and moaning wantonly. She’d turned his body into a sodding traitor he wished were dust, and the rest of him wanted her  _ as far away from him as possible.  _ He yanked on the chains, over and over. Was something giving? He couldn’t tell, it didn’t quite feel like it. “I know you like your women strong. I can be strong. I can be strong for you. I can give you what you want, really.”

   “Not this!” Spike growled. He almost wished she’d shut the fuck up, but she’d learned this from him. The goddamn banter, the eloquent persuasive single-sided debate. He’d done it to her, he’d done it to Buffy, he was a master at it. And she’d picked it up, dammit, and was twisting with his head…. “I don’t. Want.  _ This!” _

   “But you do. I  _ know _ you do. This has to be what you wanted,” Dawn kept on, and someone else was purring in his mind, someone he didn’t want to think about, something that twisted him up inside as much as Dawn was twisting him. “All that time, snuggling up with me, while Buffy was dead? You were just waiting for me to grow up a bit, weren’t you. Take Buffy’s place?”

   “No!”

   “That’s what I was waiting for. To see. One day. Someone, maybe even you. So long as there was no Buffy, when I was older? I mean if it worked, why not, yeah? But then she came back, and so much for that. But it’s not like that now. Now I know the truth. I know what’s real, what matters. You  _ can _ have it, Spike. Me, and Buffy too. You can have your cake, and your icing, you know? Do you think you’ll be able to love her, when she’s not like me? She’s alive, Spike! We’re dead! We’re… we’re the same!”

_    Do you think you’ll be able to love her.... _

   The words weren’t Dawn’s, they were someone else’s, someone... someone....

   “I’m yours. I’m part of your blood, you’re already inside me. You did it, you put yourself inside me.” Dawn unbuckled his belt. “You’ll love to be inside me again.”

_  All you ever wanted was to be back inside.... _

   Spike made a sound, as if he’d been punched, but the punch seemed to come from the inside, up through his chest, up into his brain. His head spasmed with pain.

   “I’ve wanted to get my hands on you,” Dawn said.

_ You wanted your hands on me.... _

   “It’s gonna be fine, Spike. I’ll show you. I’ll show you. It’s not like I’m really your daughter.”

   Spike froze. Something broke in him. Snapped away, and he was floating, floating…. He stared up at not-Dawn, her hand on his zipper. “It only hurts for a moment,” he said distinctly.

   The not-Dawn thing paused, confused.

   Spike vamped. He surged, he dragged, and the chains held, but the old rusted bed frame that she’d had the chains bolted to, it snapped. The bed collapsed under them, and not-Dawn leaped back, scared. He rolled, dragging the chains off the shattered bed frame. Free, free, had to get free. He grabbed a piece of metal from the destroyed bed and lashed out at the  _ thing. _ It screamed, and it sounded like Dawn, but it wasn’t. Not Dawn. Not-Dawn.

   A second later he was off the bed, chains still dangling from one arm and the opposite leg, his belt undone, a strand of his shirt still hanging off his shoulder. He still had the piece of metal, prying at the chain on his ankle with it while not-Dawn made Dawn sounds behind him–

   She was in there, somewhere. Could almost hear her calling out to him like she had on that bloody tower. He had to save her. Not-Dawn had trapped Dawn-Dawn. Locked her away, drowned her in the blood. Take out the blood, dig through the flesh and then find the girl. Find the girl, save the girl. His girl wouldn’t have…. She wouldn't….

   She was beneath him then, under his fist, and he was beating her, beating the not-Dawn that had touched him. Beating her out of Dawn. She was crying and screaming, his little bit, but it had to be done.  _ Only hurts for a moment. _ He had his knee on her chest, and he was beating at her naked body, crushing her tiny delicate bones beneath his weight, pounding on her face, clawing away at the mask of Dawn that not-Dawn wore, his fingers were bloody with her and no, too far–

   She was just a battered victim, bloodied, unrecognizable, but he knew. She was Dawn. This was Dawn. His fault. This was all his fault. He’d remade her wrong, had made her want to…. God, she smelled like death, like half-digested human blood, and she was crying, sobbing,  _ screaming _ under his fists, and he wanted to kill himself, he wanted to be dead, he wanted  _ her _ dead, he wanted it all to stop. He still had the rusted piece of bed frame in his hand. It came up, and it went down, and he staggered off her in terror. He stared at her, someone else’s face in his head, yellow eyes instead of blue, fangs instead of human teeth, but the blood, the blood was the same, the blood on her lips, something was wrong, blood on her lips, no, no....

   “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

   Then he fled, shoeless, shirtless, too twisted to remember who he was or where he was or what was real. Memories twisted in his head – Drusilla, Angelus, Darla, Dawn, Buffy, and someone, someone, someone older, no! Drusilla, Drusilla, go to Drusilla. He needed Dru. That was where he always went, to Dru. 

   He ran down the tunnel and pounded on the heavy door he found there until it was broken open, and he fled into the sewers, his bare feet sloshing through the drainage tunnel. Dru would take this away. She would ply him with blood and liquor and sex, she would beat the memories out of him, she would chain him – yes, more chains, but no, no, god the chains wouldn’t work now! Not now, not with Dawn in his head! Dawn, Dawn, daughter, son, mother, oh, god!

   He screamed, hoping the sound would drown it all out of his head, but no. No. Too many memories. Too much time. There was no more Dru. No more blood. Too much truth.

   And it wouldn’t. Go. Away.

***

 

   Dawn lay pinned like a butterfly on the mock Persian carpet on the floor of Spike’s bedroom. Naked. Beaten. Impaled on a rusty metal stake. Her body didn’t feel like hers. It was full of pain and twisted and swollen and strangely flat. She couldn’t make it work right. The stone ceiling kept flashing into the filthy beams of a basement, and she couldn’t decide if she wanted to fight or not, or... was it over yet? She just wanted it to be over with.

   “Justin?” she whispered. “I think I want to go home now.”

 

 


	28. Watcher

 

 

   Spike was watching.

   His mind swirled, a jagged, jangled kaleidoscope of dizzying colors and sounds. Spin and whirl, fly and twirl. It made him dizzy and sick, and he just wanted it to  _ stop _ . He needed to stop. To end. To end these thoughts and feelings. He’d gazed at the sun, but the sun, the son, it hadn’t seemed right, he couldn’t place himself before the son, that was the whole trouble. And he had no coat (“My sweet William is not a tattered coat” Dru had once said, and thus he’d fallen, tripped on the coattails of damned humanity), and no shirt, and he had no lighter, and without his lighter, fire was beyond him. There were no fires left in the world. Why did no one keep a fire burning? It left everything so very cold and dark.

   He had to find Drusilla. Dru knew how to make this stop, she always had before. He’d curl up against her with his head in her lap, and she’d pet him and fuss and make everything better again he drowned in her eyes and hypnotic voice. He had to find her. Where? She’d gone to ground, that had to be it. He remembered where she’d be. 

   But when he got there, the factory was an empty, burned out hole. Some other vampires had been there in the last few years, and even Dru’s old bed and her scorched doll carcasses had been shunted into a pile in the corner. He dug through the midden for a bit, but Dru wasn’t there. Why did he think she was there? Angelus had dragged her out to that dangerous jasmine garden, and...

   The mansion. That was where she was now. He’d gone back through the tunnels, snatches of songs running through his head, Dru’s old bloody hymns, the punk songs he’d sung to his niblet when she couldn’t sleep, snatches of poetry,  _ hark, hark, the lark, her name it doth spake,  _ don’t think of her name. The sun, the son, the dawn, the end, no, Dru. Drusilla, he needed Dru.

   The sewer entrance to the Crawford Street mansion was blocked. No, not blocked, bricked, though not very well. Angel had cleaned up before he left town. Spike punched at the bricks, again and again and again, and he broke his hand, but his hand was already bloody – why was his hand bloody? – and he couldn’t do this, he couldn’t. They crumbled finally, and he scrabbled a hole through and climbed down, and he was in the basement. He climbed the stairs, up to the main floor of the echoing, art deco mansion. Angelus always liked a lot of space… enough space that it was ostentatious, dangerous, drew attention to himself, the prat.

   Someone had covered what furniture there was in clean white sheets, dusty now. Spike still knew where everything was. He’d lived here in a sodding wheelchair for months, but Dru, Dru, Drusilla. He went down the other flight of stairs, to the lower level, where Dru’s bedroom was, but her door was locked – he kicked it. It fell apart. 

   Nothing had been covered here. Just locked away, her dolls still dotted her vanity, the mirror covered with a portrait – not a portrait of Drusilla, but of a little girl holding a white cat. But everything else of Dru’s was there. Her branding iron and her stakes and all her chains and her holy water – it had dried up, dammit, he could have drunk it.

   Dru wasn’t here. She was gone, she was gone, his sire was gone... sire. Mother. Mother, no, “I’m the other that gave birth to your son.”  _ NO! _

   How dare she? How dare she leave him and leave him with  _ this? _ Dolls were murdered viciously as he considered this, the little girl with the cat was punched violently in the face, and Spike knew Dru was gone. She was gone, gone for good, never coming back, he was alone in this. And it was all his own fault. He remembered that now. She’d come back for him, and he’d sent her away. (“Not even I can help you now.” Had she known what was in store? Had she  _ known? _ ) Alone, alone, he had to stop feeling this way. Ashes to dust, he had to stop feeling this way. 

   The son was out. Fires had faded from the world. Wood; he seemed to remember he’d tried that once, and failed. He always failed. He was never enough. Not son enough, not sire enough. Not demon enough for Dru, not man enough for… Buffy. Buffy, Buffy, Buffy, Buffy. The slayer. Slayers killed vampires.

   He had to get the slayer.

   How do you lure a slayer? Bait. Dig down in the ground, rich earth between fingers and toes as you search for worms. Squirmy wormies. No, no, that wasn’t it. Stupid, stupid William. Worthless tosser, that’s not how you lure a slayer. You kidnap her watcher, that’s how. He’d seen it happen before, Angelus had lured the slayer. You take her friends, leave a message, that’s how. That’s how. But he had to prove he’d earned it. That he’d the right to sleep, perchance to dream. To find his rest eternal. 

   Damn bitch hadn’t killed him, and hadn’t killed him, and hadn’t bloody killed him. She’d staked him twice already and hadn’t killed him! A magical gem and... and... restraint. Restraint had saved him last time. But she’d broken him before, and if he made her see, if she knew, if she knew he was really the Big Bad, then, then, then she’d finally do it, dammit.

   But he was castrated. Couldn’t kill. But he could make it look like he could.... Surround himself with death.

   He’d gone back to the earth where the worms still crawled, to the tunnels, trying to block out everything but a goal, and the current goal was the hospital, and he made it to the hospital, and there on the slab was the girl Dawn had eaten. He could smell his little fledgeling on her hair, recognized the shape of the niblet’s teeth in the bitemarks. Spike caressed the poor corpse. Little bit hadn’t been ready. Hadn’t been ready for this bit, or that bite, or what did he mean for her? He couldn’t think. She couldn’t stop, the niblet, nibbles, nibbles, he could see… she couldn’t stop herself….

   When someone had come in, he’d grabbed him, shoved him into a cupboard and slammed the door, because he’d interrupted. His chip sent electric shocks through him, over and over again as he wrestled the human into the cooler, but the pain wasn’t important. The distraction out of the way, he took them, tied the corpses, all of them, together. Had to take the dollies back home, couldn’t let them rot. They were torn up and broken as he dragged them through the sewer, but he had them. He had them there for the slayer, a gift.

   Then the son went away... the sun... the son failed. Night had fallen, quiet night, and Spike went down Revello Drive and watched... and watched the window. Watched and waited for the Watcher.

 

***

 

Tomorrow. Tomorrow Giles would be leaving this place of death and nightmares once more.   _ Running away, you mean, _ he thought bitterly as he paced Buffy’s living room. He’d been packing up the few things he had here while Buffy was away at her grief support group with Tara. He wanted to just sneak away, leave this all behind, and he hated himself for it.

But he couldn’t stay. Every time he closed his eyes, death stared back at him. Jenny, Joyce, Buffy, Dawn. Their dead eyes bored into him, accusatory. He’d failed them all in one way or another. And if he stayed…. If he stayed, Buffy would lean on him, and he would fall, taking them both down. If he left, she had a chance. 

God, he needed a bloody drink. He went to the cupboard where he’d squirrelled away a bottle of scotch. He was drinking too much. He knew that, but it was the only thing that dulled the pain.

   And of course he was leaving at the worst bloody time. The morning paper spoke of a body that had been found in a dumpster outside the Bronze, covered in bites. Usually the vampires of Sunnydale knew better than to advertise. This meant either someone new, or someone reckless, and neither Giles nor Buffy liked the sound of either.

   The evening news spoke of a series of break-ins during the day, the most disturbing of which was a horrific raid on the hospital morgue. A pathologist was found locked in one of his own coolers, having been grabbed from behind, a set of hospital scrubs thrown over his face, and forced inside. He was hypothermic, but otherwise unharmed. But whilst he had been locked away, the entire floor of corpses had been taken, at least six bodies in all, including the young woman from the Bronze.

   Giles had made a note of it, intending to tell Buffy that the ghouls were getting bold, but that was as far as he felt... even capable.

   He sat with his drink in his hand as another one of his failures came trudging awkwardly down the stairs. Willow had fallen completely to pieces. Well, he’d seen it coming. The news that Buffy had been resurrected had sounded like Willow’s death knell. He’d never seen anyone continue cleanly after falling that deeply into black magic. In resurrecting Buffy, Willow had to have trod paths he couldn’t bear thinking of. Ethan Rayne had never gone so deep into it as Willow must have. Everything Giles had read about the kinds of magic she would have had to tap... betrayal, profanation, corruption, desecration, and that was just for starters. She’d have angered forces it made his pulse pound to think of, destroyed purity it broke his heart to consider, and shredded inner walls he knew she’d never be able to restore. She didn’t appear to realize it, but Willow was no longer quite... human.

   It wasn’t surprising that the rush had taken her, and she’d felt unable to cease her experimentation. He’d been considering contacting the old coven in Devon when he got back to England, seeing if there was anything they could do for her... or about her, if it came to that. He had been so afraid it would come to that, and he still was. Even now.

   “Are you finished packing?” Willow asked.

   “Yes.” He had never really completely unpacked. He’d been living these last two months on Buffy’s couch, with no plans at all, just trying to step through each day without mucking things up too badly.

   He was pleased Willow appeared to have stopped her headlong descent into black magics, but he was far from convinced the danger was over. For one, Willow looked like she could barely brush her own hair without magic anymore. She’d been off it for less than a week, and she already looked as if she’d been pulled through a hedge backwards. It had taken Xander to stop her. All Giles’s own warnings had fallen on deaf ears... well, of course they would. Who wanted to listen to a washed up old man like him?

   Xander... Xander wasn’t doing any better than Willow. The laughing, cheerful young man who could face an apocalypse with a grin was a ruined shadow of a wreck. He’d come by the Magic Box the day before, asking if Giles had heard word of Anya. When Giles had admitted that no, he hadn’t, Xander had gone into the back, behind a bookshelf. Giles had pretended he didn’t see the young man in tears.

   Anya... he very much feared he knew where she had gone. He wasn’t saying it. No one was saying it. Everyone was thinking it.

   “Are you sure you have everything?” Willow asked. “I mean, you don’t want to forget your little fiddly things, like your fiddle. Or... guitar.”

   “I’m leaving that,” Giles said. “Like I did before.”

   Willow looked up hopefully. “Does... that mean you’re coming back for it?”

   It meant guitars were bloody cheap, and he didn’t want to haul the thing. “One day,” Giles said, with no idea if he was telling the truth. “I won’t be gone forever.” He looked over to her. “And I’ll always be available for you to contact, if you need me.”

   “You shouldn’t be going at all,” Willow said. “Why didn’t Buffy tell you that?”

   Buffy didn’t tell him that because she wasn’t really Buffy. Or something. That was the only thing that made sense, that something, some shade of her had been left behind, wherever she was. How else could he feel so distant from her? The resilient young slayer he had loved was gone, she was still dead to him. He hated himself for that.

   “Buffy knows this is what’s for the best,” Giles said. Or she didn’t care.

   “But it’s not for the best. I mean, things are... are wrong. With all of us. Why can’t you stay and help?”

_ Because I can only make things worse.  _ “You don’t need my help, Willow,” he said firmly. “You’re all doing very well, under very difficult circumstances. You’re all... all better off without me. You, Buffy, you all need to be able to stand on your own. If I stay, you’ll always be asking me for help, and I’ll step in, because… because I can’t bear to see you all suffer. And that’s not fair to you. You’re all adults now. If I stay, I’ll only be a crutch.”

   “But Buffy needs a watcher, doesn’t she? And you... aren’t you her watcher? Isn’t the council gonna get all ooh, angry shifty eyes if Buffy’s here on the hellmouth alone?”

   “The council decided on a hands-off policy with Buffy a long time ago.” 

   “But aren’t they paying you? Doesn’t that mean you have to stay?”

   “No!” Giles snapped. “It doesn’t.” He’d given most of the money the council gave him to Buffy, and it felt like blood-money as he’d handed it over. Here is your forty pieces of silver, received for destroying the lives of innocent children. Xander. Willow. Buffy. Dawn....

   That was where Giles always broke down and had to stop thinking. If he started to think about Dawn, he knew the only thing to do, and it made him feel as he felt under that tower, murdering that young boy Ben in cold blood for fear Glory might rise again. Dawn was a monster, no chip, no soul, no excuses. He needed to destroy her, and he couldn’t. He bloody  _ couldn’t. _

   Let Buffy self-destruct. Let Xander fall down. Let Willow implode. Let Dawn die. Hell, while he was at it, let Faith collapse, let Oz resign, let Riley abdicate, let Cordelia run, let Anya relapse, let Tara leave, and let’s not forget Jenny. Or Amy or Larry or Harmony or however many other children were lost or corrupted or killed under his oh-so-vaunted “watch” as Watcher. The ones he wouldn’t let himself think about, because they were only tangentially connected to him and the Scoobies, but wasn’t every life he touched his responsibility? Giles quickly took another sip of his drink. He had to stop being responsible, that was all. He couldn’t bear it anymore.

   Willow shook her head. “I don’t think you’re right. I think you’re wrong, very wrong. I think things are going to get worse without you, and I think you know that, and I think you don’t care, or are glad of it, or something.”

   “Willow–”

   “No,” she said, close to tears. “Look. I know I screwed up, okay? I get it now. Bringing Buffy back was… was hard, and I… I went too far. I should have realized. I should have slowed down after, I should have gotten help, or… or something. But don’t punish Buffy just ‘cause you’re pissed off at me. It’s not fair to her, it’s not fair to me, and... and what are you going to do in England besides more of this?” To his surprise, she knocked the glass clean out of his hand.

   Rage flared through him. “Well, that was mature.” 

   “So’s running when you know you’re just being a coward!” 

   Giles headed across the room to get more scotch. “Buffy doesn’t need me,” he said, believing every word of it as he said it. “There’s nothing here she can’t handle on her own.”

   The plate glass window behind them suddenly shattered, belying his words even as he spoke them. Giles was astonished to see a form, white, almost completely white, as a creature he couldn’t identify screamed at them. Then he did recognize it. Spike. Spike, shirtless, unshod, his hair wild, his demonic face mad.  _ But he can’t,  _ he thought.  _ He’s chipped, he can’t hurt... _

   It seemed, Giles realized before he passed out under his blows, that Spike could. So long as he didn’t mind hurting himself.

***

 

   “I just... I just wish that I could talk to him, you know? Make him understand?” said Raymond, and most of the people in the circle nodded. “But he’s gone. He’s just gone, and it’s like... trying to climb a step that isn’t there, or turning on a light and the bulb is burned out, you know?”

   Tara sat back and listened, as Raymond finished what he had to say, and the group leader made a few final announcements. Much like Buffy, she never said much in grief therapy. Her shyness had returned, and her stammer was worse without Willow, but she wasn’t living afraid of taking a step wrong all the time, so that was good. At the beginning of the grief circle every Tuesday, they all stood together and said, or whispered, or just thought the names of everyone they felt they were grieving for.  _ Mother, Dawn, Willow, _ Tara thought. Sometimes the circle expanded to include her grief for her family, who were basically dead to her, or for the Scoobies, who she missed, but for the most part it was those three.

   Buffy always winced at that part, and the weight of what she missed or grieved for seemed so heavy Tara wanted to hug the girl. Whenever the circle said to hold hands, Tara reached for Buffy’s with sympathy and warmth, and she squeezed it with a heartfelt sincerity which Buffy seemed to appreciate.

   Buffy had only come to three sessions. This was Tara’s fifth. The group was in session constantly. It was based on a system which was supposed to last eight weeks, but with the amount of people who suffered losses in Sunnydale, the group leader had adapted the program to a drop-in cycle. Today they had been discussing myths about grief. The idea that “Time heals all wounds” or that the goal of grieving was to “let go and move on.” Consistent fallacies about the best way of handling the problem, such as “keep busy” or “don’t let yourself give in to tears.” And of course the worst idea possible, “don’t burden others with your problems.”

   It had been a very important session for Tara. She thought it meant a lot to Buffy, too.

   They went to help fold up the chairs. Most of the others had already left, apart from the group leader, filling out paperwork in the back of the library. This was the first time Tara had seen Buffy since she’d found out about Dawn. Buffy had called her after Spike’s reveal, to confirm that she’d known, and ask her opinion about Dawn. Tara had told her the truth; that Dawn had attacked her once, but seemed a little embarrassed by it now, and since that first day she’d felt completely safe around her. She hadn’t heard from Buffy since, but she was relieved when she showed up tonight, apparently not irritated by Tara keeping the secret as long as she had.

   “So y-you’re not-not mad at me?” she asked as they put their chairs away.

   “About Dawn?” Buffy asked. “You kept telling me to talk to Spike. Am I right in thinking that was your way of trying to let me in on it?”

   “Yeah,” Tara said. “I w-wanted to tell you, I-I just–” She cut herself off, feeling helpless.

   “No, I needed to hear it from him. There’s vampire stuff you wouldn’t have been able to answer.” 

   Tara heaved a sigh of relief. “Dawn... she’s trying to be a good kid. I think... maybe if we help her, encourage her. I mean, she keeps saying she’s evil, but... I thought I was evil, too, once.”

   “You’re not evil, Tara.”

   “I know. But I thought I was, and I did things, like lie and cast that spell on you all so you wouldn’t see it. And all it took was you guys telling me I-I didn’t have to be.”

   “I think... I think I’m still waiting and seeing,” Buffy said. “But I think I agree. We’ll find out, I guess. About her  _ and _ Spike.”

   “I trust Spike,” Tara said. “He’s really done a lot, Buffy. You should have seen him while you were dead.”

   “I... I know. He’s...” Buffy swallowed. “I think he’s trying to be good.”

   The door burst open, and in came Willow, flushed, hair wild, a cut on her cheek. “Spike’s turned evil,” she said without preamble.

   Buffy was no less surprised than Tara. “What?”

   Willow panted and held up one finger. “Sorry. Ran.” She paused and took several deep breaths. “Spike’s turned evil,” she said a moment later. “He crashed into the house, and started hitting Giles. He was screaming, he seemed... god. Crazy. He said... he said to tell you he has your watcher, and he took... he took Giles!”

   “He  _ what? _ ” Buffy said. Her voice was cold as ice, and it sent a chill up Tara’s spine. Her aura had gone spikey.

   Willow took another gasp and looked about to cry. “I... I let them go! I’m sorry, I... I had a spell. I could have done this spell, but I... I....” She fell into a sob.

   “No, no, that’s good,” Buffy said quickly.

   “I ran... I ran instead. For you. But... oh, god, Giles!”

   “No, that’s good, Willow,” Tara said. “No magic. You can’t risk it!” She felt as if she were watching a Willow dangling on a cliff, with her hand on a root, and she was scrabbling for purchase. Spike had just opened this cliff under her....

   “But where did he take Giles, do you know?” Buffy asked.

   “I... I don’t....”

   Buffy closed her eyes, then looked pleadingly at Tara. Tara wanted to say she could cast a spell, but didn’t quite like to in front of Willow.

   “Spike said something about... he said you’d know.”

   “I’d know?”

   “I don’t know, he was raving, babbling, something about getting librarian out of the carpet, and happy meals and Manchester United? I really couldn’t follow. Oh! Oh! Acathla! He said the name Acathla!”

   Buffy’s face steeled. “He’s at the mansion. Crawford Street. Willow, call Xander. Tell him to meet me – he’ll remember where. I’ll probably need him to get Giles out again.”

   “Right.” Willow took off.

   Tara was completely lost. “What’s going on?”

   Buffy was completely closed down. She looked utterly inhuman, and her aura was no longer spikey, it was diamond. “Something very, very ugly is being replayed.” Then the tiniest crack appeared in her adamant aura. “Tara? Uh... would you go and... and check on Dawn? With Willow? If she’s with Spike, I’ll deal with it, but if she’s at the crypt… um. Get her… get her somewhere safer. But watch her! No personal invites. Maybe the Magic Box?”

   “Yeah. I can do that,” Tara said. Willow had gone to the back of the library to the courtesy phone, and was dialing Xander already. “Is... is this something I should-should worry about?”

   “Worry about Dawn. If there is a Dawn to worry about. I....” And that crack grew larger in her aura, and then closed over again. “I don’t know why this would happen again. There’s no soul to lose.”

   “What?” Tara had heard a bit about Angel/Angelus, in both giggled and solemn whispers from Willow, but the particulars of the story had always seemed so bizarre.

   “I don’t know what’s happened,” Buffy said. “But I don’t think this is apocalypse, world grade. My bet is something smaller. More personal.” She was digging around in her backpack as she said it. “Holy water... stake. There. Let’s hope I don’t need a sword.”

   “Buffy...? Are... are you going to kill Spike?”

   Buffy gave a low growl. “I’m not doing this again,” she said. She glared up at Tara, and her eyes were terrifying. “Yes.”

   Tara didn’t like the idea. Spike had stood between her and disaster so many times.... “Buffy... um. Take this,” she said, pressing a packet of powder into Buffy’s hand. “It’s sorbis root. I think I fixed the formula. It sort of confuses vampires.”

   “Thanks. But I know how to kill them.”

   “Yeah. But... if you wanted to figure out what’s going on... maybe... this could slow him down, and you-you could ask.”

   Buffy paused, and then pocketed the packet. Tara found herself heaving a sigh of relief. She’d done what she could.

   Willow came running up. “Xander says he remembers. And he’ll come armed with something better than a rock this time.”

   “Just tell him to get there fast,” Buffy said. “I’m running.” She was out the door before Tara had a chance to tell her goodbye.

   Willow collapsed onto a chair and sobbed. Tara sat beside her and put her hand on her shoulder, unable to stay away from her. She had missed her so much.... “It’s not fair,” Willow was muttering. “It’s not fair, I had so many things I could do, and I couldn’t do any of them. I didn’t think I’d be tested this soon, I thought... I thought....”

   “You did right, Willow,” Tara said. “You did right. I know, it’s gonna be hard.”

   “Oh, Tara... you have no idea how hard! I had to just stand there and  _ watch _ !”

   Tara wanted to kiss her, but she knew she had to be strong. She took her hand and squeezed it instead. “I know. But we can do good, even without the magic. Come on. We have to go check on Dawn.”

   “On Dawn?”

   Tara nodded. “If Spike’s gone crazy... it might have something to do with her.”

 

 


	29. Broken

 

 

   Pain gets boring after a while.

   Dawn didn’t know how long she’d been lying there, skewered by the rusted metal, but she could sense that her namesake had come, and possibly traversed most of the sky, unless she’d gotten turned around. Which meant even if she got up she couldn’t go above ground yet. Fine. Getting up the ladder was going to be impossible, anyway. She knew that without much assessment.

   She couldn’t move her right arm.  _ That’s okay. You don’t need your right arm, you have your left. The left arm is stronger. _ She wasn’t sure why she felt that, but it was certainly true at the moment. She moved her left arm. She reached up and touched the metal. It was long, sort of L shaped, right angled to hold the mattress up on a flange. Moving it made more blood pour out of her, and that was bad. Blood was what she needed, more blood. Lots of blood.

   Logic told her that if she hadn’t been full up with fresh human blood, she wouldn’t be doing as well as she was. Human blood made vampires stronger, made them heal faster, made them... impulsive. (She’d forgotten that bit.) More evil. (She’d forgotten that bit, too.)

   But evil, evil was what she needed now. You can’t slay evil. You can slay the vampire, but you can’t slay evil, and that was what it was going to take. Something that couldn’t be slain. She was evil. She could not be slain. She made herself forget she was once Dawn as she made herself move. She threw her left arm over and made herself use the momentum to turn.

   She screamed as the pain flared through her, but after three attempts, she’d gotten onto her side. Her right arm was a useless bloody mass under her, and why? Why?  _ You were using it to hold him off, _ she remembered.  _ He hit it over and over again, it broke. _ Right.

   The metal was still through her, but from her side she got her knees under her, and from her knees, she was able to get something similar to vertical, though she screamed again while she did it.

   Kneeling on the blood soaked carpet, she looked down. Anatomy lessons she’d been studying almost exclusively lately told her that her ribs were broken, her right arm had been almost pulverized, and though she couldn’t see it – she reached up to feel – there was something wrong with her jaw.

   Okay, she thought. First step. Get the stake out. She took hold of it with her left hand.  _ God, no, no, no! Ugh!  _ That hurt too much. Okay. Not possible. All right. What else can you do? She reached up and put her jaw right. She wished again for a mirror, then remembered it wouldn’t do her any good and was simultaneously glad of the fact. She didn’t really want to see her face right now. There was something loose in her mouth. Teeth. Spike had knocked several teeth loose... she vamped, and the action resecured them as they went through the metamorphosis into fangs, but she screamed again, because bloody buggering  _ fuck  _ that hurt!

_ Bloody. Bloody. Bloody hell, bloody hell, bloody hell. _ The words were strangely comforting.

   She felt a little stronger vamped. Or... or more like the pain didn’t matter? Maybe that was it. And that meant she could do this, she could do this. Without thinking about it she grabbed the metal stake without any mental preparation and yanked.

   She passed out. But when she came to, the stake was several inches further out of her chest. She had to go through the whole painful process of climbing to her knees again (it felt like Mount-fucking-Everest) and grab at it, but that time it came out. A lot of blood came with it, and she swore again. 

   “Bloody hell, bloody hell....” She pressed her hand to the wound until the demonic energies decided she meant it and let her keep her blood inside her. Sort of. There was still a slight oozing trickle, but it would have to do.

   Okay. Now what. Arm. That damn right arm. Maybe she should just cut it off, the damn thing was useless! No. No, it would get better. What had Spike said? Everything heals. If you’re not made dust, everything can heal.  _ But we get scars. You have a scar. _

_    I keep cutting that one open, niblet. I’m proud of this puppy. Every time I feel it starting to fade I slice it open again. _

_    Why? _

_    Because there are some things worth keeping. Even pain. _

   Pain. Pain. Okay. Keep the arm. She was going to have to do something with it, though, because it was getting in the way. And the ribs. She made herself vamp again, because yeah, she could endure the pain a bit better that way, even though the act itself cost her. She could feel it costing her, as if the blood in her body was an account, and every act took a little more money out. If she ended up broke, she’d be... what? Dust? No. No, probably not, but she’d be stuck like a real damn corpse until something with blood bothered to wander past her, and the bloodlust took over.

   She tried to take a deep breath, because even if she didn’t need air it sometimes helped, but she couldn’t get it, because, right, her ribs were flattened. “Bloody hell, bloody hell, bloody hell,” She breathed as she reached up with her left hand and tried to reset them, at least into the right goddamn shape. She didn’t think she’d quite gotten it when she gave up, but at least she could breathe again. Sort of. Her lungs had been punctured, and they felt wrong, strangely heavy. Full up with blood, probably. The one place in her body she didn’t need blood, and it had decided to hang out there? Annoying blood.

   Blood. Blood, that was it, she needed blood. Find someone, bite someone, kill someone, that would...

   That would get the slayer on you. This is an attempt to live, right?  _ The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. _ So, so damn hard. But blood. She needed blood. That would help the pain, that would heal the wounds, that would make everything better. Blood is life, blood makes you other than dead. There’s blood upstairs....

   No. There wasn’t. Even if there was, the ladder... no arm. Not strong enough. Okay, fuck the ladder, and she thought the fridge was empty, anyway, unless Spike had restocked it while she’d been napping after she’d found that woman, filled herself up with that fresh, clean, dead blood from that....

   God. She had no idea how she felt about it all right now. She wanted more, but if she hadn’t had it, would she be feeling like this now? She’d just wanted to show Spike how much she loved him. Make him feel like Buffy could make him feel. Make it... make sense.

   Don’t think about that now. Blood. Get blood. There are only three half-grown kittens upstairs, that’s not enough, and if they don’t just walk up to you you could never catch them, anyway. So, what. What, where? The butcher. The butcher had blood. That meant... she had to go there. She knew the way through the tunnels, it wasn’t too far. No ladders. Maybe she could do that.

   She started toward the exit tunnel, and her eye caught on something. Spike’s coat. It was hanging over the side of the dresser. That was strange... Spike wasn’t here, why was his coat here? That didn’t make sense. He didn’t have his skin. He was naked without it. Then she realized she was naked, too. While for herself she didn’t care much, the butcher would care. Damn. 

   She made herself turn around – she was really dizzy with all the pain, dammit – and go back to her little alcove. Her feet almost slipped as she squelched over the lurid spot of blood on the carpets. Her room. She couldn’t get a t-shirt over her head. God, there was no way she could put on jeans. There... there was that red dress. It would cover enough, and it was hung up. She ducked herself under it, put her left arm through it, and it sort of fell over her. It pinned her right arm to her side, and she couldn’t pull it out, but if she tugged at the skirt, it covered her enough to count as clothes.

   She trudged back out into the room and... she didn’t know why she had the impulse, but she did. She reached out with her left hand and yanked on Spike’s coat. The damn thing was heavy, heavy, heavy, but it didn’t take much to throw it over her shoulders. She put her arm through the sleeve.... There. Now she felt protected.

   Limping, dizzy, only one handed, she made it down the exit tunnel, dreading trying to open the almost vault door which Spike had installed down there, but no. It was open, the very beam it had been attached to bent and no longer hanging true. She crept through it and walked, step, step, step through the tunnel. Thank god she knew the route. She knew it, she knew it. Step. Step. Step.

   Time meant nothing. There was no end to this journey, it was just the journey, to keep walking, keep moving, not let it end. Step. Step. Step. Don’t stop. The only thing you’ll get down here are rats and other demons. Just. Keep. Walking. Step. Step. Step.

   There. There was the entrance to the butcher’s slaughterhouse, where the shielded door was, where he’d finally just put up a bell to alert him when someone came out of the tunnels. She had never asked if he knew he was catering to vampires, but everyone knew the man was safe. If anyone had tried to kill the butcher of Sunnydale, the entire demon population would have been on the malefactor in a heartbeat. Or a lack of one. It was the only place to buy blood cheaply and easily and... and....

   She collapsed, and sobbed, and she wanted to scream, because the sobbing hurt her lungs. She had no money! Did Spike have anything? His pockets were empty, no wallet, nothing. Well, there was a stake. One stake. She had one stake to her name, and no money, and she needed blood, and there was no Spike... no Spike.... She cried, and her tears were tainted with blood. Had he hit her eyes? He probably had. Her whole face was puffy and misshapen. She had no idea what she looked like.

   Would it be worth it to try and kill someone? As of this point, Dawn had the moral high ground when it came to Buffy at least (but not Spike anymore, never again Spike, she’d really fucked up there….) If Dawn managed to avoid killing anyone, Buffy wouldn’t be justified in staking her. Spike’s logical reasons for not killing really did make sense, more sense than they’d made last night, and that pissed her off, and scared her, because she  _ needed _ blood dammit! She  _ needed _ it! But, god, could she even have killed anyone in the state she was in? She didn’t think so. Not unless they just lay down and bared their throats for her, which when she was cute and pretty they might have, but now that she was a misshapen beaten monstrous thing….  

   She sat with the stake in her left hand, needing blood, and crying, when a flare of artificial light pierced the sewer. She looked up. Two vampires – she knew they were vampires, though they were still in camo – came down the stairs with a grocery bag, laughing over something some human had done the night before, something about being so far gone he’d called one of them mommy. “I swear, dude. Mommy! I couldn’t keep a straight face, thank god he was too far gone to care.”

   The other vampire stopped when he saw her. “What’s this?”

   She was suddenly terrified. She stayed vamped, kept the stake firmly in her left hand, and staggered to her feet, backing away.  _ It’s not just us. All vampires kill each other. _ “Stay back. I know how to use this thing.”

   The vampire frowned, then let his game face on. He was tall, and kind of cute, though he had on a silk shirt that made him look a little strange, and he wore a cowboy hat and had a little bolo tie and a vest. He looked better dressed than almost all the fledges she’d seen wandering Sunnydale, unless you counted the newborns in their funeral clothes. “Hey, it’s okay, babe. You’re one of us.”

   “That’s what worries me,” she said. She could smell blood in the grocery bag. Pig. She wanted to lunge for it.

   “Well, you know, it’s all good. I don’t fight girls.”

   “Someone fought her,” said the other guy, who wasn’t as cute. He was more fledgelike, clothes stained, kind of slovenly. Spike had told her most vampires didn’t care about appearances at first. She hadn’t, either, but he’d made her brush her hair every day, and wash her clothes, and... and care about things. Except now she looked worse than the most grave-happy fledge, and she knew it.

   “I can see that. You don’t look so good. You had a run in with some demon?”

   She didn’t know what to say. Spike had taught her, don’t show weakness in front of other vampires. She was already weak, she was beaten, handicapped, starving for blood. What would impress them? “The Slayer,” she said. “I fought with the Slayer.” Well, technically this was true, she and Buffy fought all the time, and they had sparred the night before.

   It was the right thing to say. The two vampires looked decidedly impressed. Until one of them didn’t. “And you’re still alive?” He scoffed. “I don’t buy it, Link. If she’d fought with the slayer, she’d be dust.”

   The tall one called Link was frowning at her. “I don’t think so. I know that coat.”

   She took another step back. Spike was known, and hated, and considered a traitor, but he was also respected and feared.

   “Wait a minute, are you Dusk?”

   She blinked. “Uh... yeah.”

   Link nudged his buddy with his elbow. “She probably did fight the slayer. It’s her.”

   The other vampire still looked scornful. “She doesn’t look so tough.”

   “Rack never said she was tough, he said she was high class.”

   “She doesn’t look it to me.”

   “Catch me some time when I’m full strength!” she retorted. “I’ll show you what I am.”

   “You’re in trouble,” Link said. “That’s what you are.”

   She cringed, afraid that was a threat, but Link scrabbled at his buddy’s grocery bag and pulled out a plastic bag of blood. “Here. On the house,” he said over his friend’s mild protest. He threw the blood at her.

   She instinctively lunged for it, and the stake dropped, and she sort of couldn’t care. She brought the bag to her mouth and bit down, sucking and sucking at the blood as the bag slowly shrank in her hand. It was the cheap stuff. It tasted of feedlot and garbage and the plastic bag and she didn’t care. She sucked it down and kept sucking at the empty bag to get the last little drops of blood.

   “You’re welcome,” Link said with sarcasm.

   She opened her mouth to say thank you, to apologize, but no. Don’t show weakness. “I know,” she said.

   Link seemed to think that was cute. He smiled. “Well. You just let your sire know, Link helped you. Now go on back to your lair.”

   She crumpled suddenly, as a realization popped into her head. “I don’t have a lair,” she said aloud, the shock of it sending her giddy. She’d only had Spike’s lair, and Spike...

   Spike had tried to kill her. She’d been avoiding that thought.

   “Oh, god,” she whispered. Her head sank. What had she done, what had she done? She’d ruined everything.

   Link seemed curious. “No lair? You mean the slayer found it? She knows where you holed up during the day?”

   Well, this was certainly true. She nodded. She couldn’t go back to Spike’s. And... and she couldn’t go to Buffy, because Buffy didn’t really trust her, and if Spike didn’t trust her, than Buffy  _ really  _ wouldn’t, because they were groin-buddies now. And Tara was... leery, and Xander was flat spooked by her, and she had nothing. She had no one. She’d pissed off Spike, and now she had no one. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” she whispered.

   Link looked at his buddy with a bit of a smile. “What do you say, Reg? She needs more than this pig swill.”

   “I say I don’t want to get my toes in it, we’ll piss someone off. And she doesn’t look worth it.”

   “Well, good thing you’re not the honcho, ain’t it?” Link said. He turned back to her. “Why don’t you come back to the lair with us. We got a good gang going, a really good batch of feeders trained up right. Put in a good word with your sire.”

   “Forget my sire,” she said, beginning to remember her dignity. “You worry about me.”

   Link smiled through his fangs. “I already am. You got the slayer after you, you’ve tasted plenty of trouble, I can feel it.” He held out his hand. “Come on. I’ll bet under that blood you’ve got a good face. I was told you did. Dusk was pretty, precious, and probably dangerous.” He beckoned with his fingers. “Come on. Just for the rest of the day, yeah? Get you somewhere safe, get enough blood in you so we can see what you really look like.”

   She stepped back. “I don’t trust you.”

   Link grinned. “I don’t stake other vamps for the hell of it. My sire was Order of Aurelius, we have respect for the blood of the vampire. Unlike your sire.”

   “I don’t want to talk about my sire.”

   “Then I won’t,” Link said. “Come on. There’s plenty of other girls in my nest, you’ll like it. You’ll be safe there.”

   “Until you hunt the wrong human and get the slayer after you,” she said. “No.”

   “We don’t hunt, we farm,” Link said. “We got a nice bunch of regulars all lined up, they come in weekly. Supplement with a little pig, and we’re on easy street.”

   She caught on. “You’re a couple of suckers.”

   Link lowered his hand and looked dark. “I prefer cowboy,” he said. “That’s all this is, herding cattle. If you don’t respect that, then–”

   “No,” she said. “No, I can respect it.”

   Link smiled again. “Come on. You need a place to heal up, if nothing else, right?”

   “Order of Aurelius?” she said. She stepped up to Link, but didn’t take his hand. “You know my great grandsire was the Master.”

   “Yeah, I heard that,” Link said. He led her through the sewers, explaining that he wasn’t really Aurelian himself, there were too many rules, but he had respect for some of the teachings, and it was worth it to follow a few of the rituals, and Dawn wasn’t really listening. Dawn had been left behind somewhere in the pain.

   She was Dusk now.

 

 


	30. Boojum

 

 

   It was disturbingly quiet as Tara and Willow approached Spike’s crypt. It was as if the knowledge that Spike might never be coming back had made it feel like what it was: a place of quiet death. Strange, how a dead man had made it seem so alive. She’d forgotten sometimes, over the summer, that he was a vampire. The times when he’d hang out at the house watching movies with her and Dawn, eating popcorn and stealing the occasional spoonful of ice cream. The way he would hold himself back during patrol so Giles wouldn’t be left too far behind, though he snarked about it the entire time. But it had been okay, because Giles would snark right back, both of them comfortably communicating in the  _ true _ native language of England.

   She’d said something about that once. About all the snark on the hunt. Spike had said something about the snark being a boojum, and they would softly and suddenly vanish away, and Giles had laughed. It had gone over Tara’s head, but it had seemed undeniably British, whatever it was.

   Maybe that was what had happened. What Spike had said. He had softly and suddenly vanished away. “For the snark was a boojum, you see,” she muttered.

   “What was that?” Willow asked. 

   Tara shook her head, nothing, but she was bothered. She missed it, patrolling together. Not so much the danger, though there had been a thrill in knowing she was helping to make the city safer. But the feeling of comradery between the three of them. She might never do it again. Giles was leaving, and Spike…. Would they ever even know what had happened? Would Buffy use the sorbis root, or would she just… end him? Turn Spike to dust without even asking why? Softly, and suddenly.

   She shook her head again and forced the thoughts away. Think Dawn. She glanced over at the window once they were close enough, and something cold and heavy settled into her gut like a brick. None of Spike’s candles were lit. She’d been by the crypt often enough to know it was one of the few rituals he stuck to almost religiously. Spike  _ always  _ lit his candles. There was also no sign that Dawn had done it. Which could just mean she might be in the lower level. Still though…. She tried the door, only to find it locked.

  She knocked. “Dawn? It’s Tara and Willow. Is everything all right?” 

  No response. “Dawn?” 

  Nothing. She tried the door. Locked. 

  Damn. 

  “Magic?” Willow asked, a disturbing amount of longing in her voice as she stared at Tara’s hand on the door.

   The brick in Tara’s stomach was joined by a flopping fish, making her feel sick. It’d be like cracking a beer and taking a swig right in front of a recovering alcoholic, but Willow was right. They needed to get inside and find out what had happened, and the only real way to do that was with magic. She knocked again, heavily this time, and listened, but no. Nothing. Nothing for it, then….  

   She gathered her power, murmuring softly to herself as she directed it through her fingertips and into the door. The bolt inside clicked. The door swung open, and the two of them went in, Tara reaching into her purse to pull out a flashlight. Even if Willow hadn’t been with her, she would have gone for the flashlight over a light spell. Magic was best used when practicing, when something needed to be done that couldn’t be any other way, or for rituals and the like meant to strengthen the bonds between people. Like when she and Willow had floated roses together….

   No. No, she couldn’t think about that right now. She took a deep breath and turned the flashlight on, ignoring Willow’s small sound of disappointment. The beam of light began a slow sweep, revealing nothing definite. Wait, what was that? Her heart sped up, and her mouth went dry as something moved in the shadows just beyond the range of her flashlight. 

   “What is it? What’s wrong?” Willow asked quietly, hands clenching and unclenching at her sides as if she was just barely holding back the urge to light up the entire area with a spell.

_  “Mew.” _

   Oh thank all the gods. “It’s just the kittens,” Tara as she dropped down into a crouch, holding out her hand and clicking her tongue.

   “There’s  _ kittens?” _ Willow dropped down to her knees beside her as the kittens came over. She seemed so sweet and innocent as she cooed at them, murmuring nonsense in that little girl voice she used sometimes. God, it hurt, watching her like this. Remembering when things had been good between them. It made Tara want to just forget all of the problems and hold her close.

   “Goddess, this is awful. Why does Spike just leave his poker winnings to wander around like this?”

   “Oh, no, these aren’t….” Tara stopped and thought about it for a second. “Actually, that’s probably what they started out as. Now they’re Dawn’s pets.”

  “Dawn has pets? But… why? No soul, she’s….”

  “Fond of them,” Tara said. “The tabbies are Winken and Blinken, I can’t tell them apart. And that’s Nodd.”

   The teenage vampire had been good about taking care of them, but they seemed hungry now, like they hadn’t eaten in a day or so. What had happened? Where was Dawn, and why had Spike supposedly gone bad again? Too bad the kittens couldn’t tell them.

   “Huh. Dawn has kittens,” Willow murmured thoughtfully. She bit her lip and glanced at Tara. “Angel was in town recently. He uh… he thanked me for his soul. First big spell I ever did.”

  “That’s good,” Tara said, feeling the exact opposite. The last thing Willow needed right now was someone thanking her for casting a powerful Romani curse, dragging souls across dimensions. The Buffy thing was bad enough.

  “Yeah. He said… it was a good thing I’d done. That he was glad to have it. And Dawn is… um…. The thing is, I’d been thinking…. You remember that spell I showed you? The one I used to get it back for him?”

   Cold dread shivered up Tara’s spine. Oh god, no, Willow  _ couldn’t  _ be suggesting what she thought she was. She did remember seeing the spell and all of Willow’s notes, and, quite frankly, she thought it was obscene. Yanking a soul from wherever it had been and shoving it into a demon to punish said demon. No care to how the soul felt about the whole thing, punishing an innocent soul for the crimes of its own killer. It was sick and wrong. 

   “Anyway,” Willow continued, “I know I shouldn’t do magic, but if I did, just this once…. It could do a lot of good. I’d need two people to help. I think Amy would be willing to be one. Would you…?”

  “No!” Tara snapped, getting to her feet and backing away. “No more magic, Willow! Especially not  _ that _ magic!”

   “What? Why not? I, I can quit again, after.”

   Tara just looked at her.

   Willow looked chagrined. “I guess you’re right. Temptation. But you know, maybe  _ you _ could do it, and I’d just help. It would be something good for Dawn.” 

   Tara felt like she was going to throw up. She could see it in the other woman’s face. A complete lack of understanding as her brow furrowed in confusion. How could she be so powerful, yet so lacking in her basic understanding of magic?

   “Willow, it’s a  _ curse _ !” She made herself calm down. Shouting wasn’t going to help matters here. “That’s why the spell has an escape clause. You don’t find those on beneficial spells, you  _ know  _ that.” That was the nature of magic. It was full of checks and balances. If you cursed someone, you had to make sure there was an escape, or the magic would find a way to bite you in the ass for it. “They chose perfect happiness for a  _ reason _ . The curse itself was supposed to keep him miserable and tormented. They probably thought perfect happiness would be impossible. Do you  _ really _ want to do that to Dawnie?”

   “It wouldn’t be like that,” Willow protested. 

_ Yes, it would, _ Tara thought wearily. But for whatever reason, Willow couldn’t see it. And until she could…. 

   “Besides, it’s not Dawnie,” Willow went on, oblivious. “Like Angelus wasn’t Angel, you know? Not until the spell.”

   Tara sighed. “You’re right.”  _ And so, so wrong _ . “But she seems happy without the soul, and she hasn’t done anything that merits cursing her.”  _ And neither has Dawn’s soul, wherever it is.  _ “If she’s happy, and safe, and not killing… not-not even a bunch of kittens… why would we have to cast a spell?”

   Willow looked down. “It was just Angel seemed grateful. I was glad my magic had done… something good. Somewhere. Angel, and Buffy. I know I screwed up, but…”

   But the thought of having wasted the last four years of her life hurt Willow, and Tara could see it. All that training, growing all that power… to have gotten to the point she couldn’t use it anymore… Tara shuddered. Even the  _ idea _ of going so deep she’d have to lose the magic hurt Tara. She hated to think how it was hurting Willow. 

   “I know.” She headed towards the entrance to the lower level. “Come on. We, we need to check downstairs.”

   Once down the ladder, her heart sank even lower, something she hadn’t quite believed could happen. The lamps were on, revealing a scene of disturbing violence.

   “Oh, goddess,” Willow whispered in horror. “What happened here?”

   The bed was a broken wreck, and there was blood, lots of blood, smeared on some of the furniture, splattered a bit on a few walls, but mostly in a lurid, still-sticky pool on the carpets. So much blood, but whose? Had the two vampires snapped, leading to Dawn killing someone for them to share? No, that didn’t seem right. She was pretty sure Dawn wouldn’t have killed without Spike’s permission, and if he was going to use her to hunt his food, he’d have done it before now. 

   And they wouldn’t have wasted the blood like this. No, someone was hurt, and Tara’s bet was it was either Dawn or Spike. She looked carefully in the center of the pool of blood, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t see a small pile of dust. She didn’t… but that didn’t mean Dawnie was okay.

   “I don’t know,” Tara said. “But we have to tell Buffy.”

   “Shouldn’t we…  _ you _ do a spell? To make sure Dawn’s okay?”

   There was an eagerness and, well,  _ hunger _ in Willow’s voice that made Tara shudder. “No,” she said shortly, giving the room one last look. No dust anywhere, but there were a couple of clumps of brown hair, like something had ripped it from someone’s head. Possibly Dawn’s head, considering the color and length. “Dawn’s either hiding somewhere safe, or she’s in trouble. If she’s in trouble, there won’t be much we can do about it by ourselves.”

   “Oh.” Willow swallowed and nodded shakily. “Right. You’re right.” She swallowed and looked awkward. “I know, it’s sounding like I’m just magic, magic, all over. I’ve actually been doing really good. I haven’t done a spell in almost eight days. Not even tonight, not even with Giles. I-I can even visit the magic box again, with… with supervision. That’s good, right?”

  Tara nodded. “Yeah. That’s good.” 

  Willow looked at her expectantly, as if she expected Tara to say something else. Like maybe that she was coming home now. 

  “That’s very good,” she said. “I  _ am _ proud of you.” 

  Willow still looked like she expected something else. Tara looked around for something to distract, and her eye caught on a bag of kitten chow in the corner. Here was something. And it needed to be done, anyway. She went over and picked it up. If… when… Dawn came from wherever she was, her pets would be happy and well cared for.

   “Good idea,” Willow said when she saw the cat food. “We can take the little kitties home and get them fed.”

   Home. “No,” Tara said. “I, I think I should take them back with me to Melissa’s. Just until we figure out what’s going on. She won’t mind.”

   “Back with…? Oh.” 

   “Miss Kitty….” God, she missed that cat. Dawn had felt so bad about it. She’d convinced Spike to help her bake cookies as an apology. They hadn’t brought Miss Kitty Fantastico back, but they’d been heartfelt and really good. “That wasn’t a safe place for her, with all the weapons. The kittens need to be away from things that are bad for them. At least until we’re very sure things are… safe.”

   She looked into Willow’s eyes as she said it, saw the expression in them change as she absorbed the deeper meaning in her words. Pain, rejection, sadness…. She hated doing that to Willow, but she had to do what was best. For both of them. She couldn’t be with someone who was going to try to control her, and Willow needed to learn that there were lasting consequences to her actions. 

   “Come on,” Tara said gently, picking up a lidded basket which no doubt was meant for this purpose. “Give me a hand?”

 

***

 

   A cold, dead hand dangled against Spike’s chest as he hoisted the corpse up on its hook. He alternately hummed and sang to himself as he positioned the bodies, hanging from the ceiling. Hooks and the chandelier, and this old mansion was just made for this. All had to be just right. Just so. Guests for the party, but not  _ the _ guest. Guests and decorations all in one, all hung up in a row. Except for this last. Pride of place, she’d have.

   The cold, dead hand slid across his bare arm as he worked to position the corpse, chaining her by the fireplace. Chains and touch. Touch, touch. He didn’t want to be touched, but he was a bad little boy. Naughty, naughty thing, and not allowed to say no. Just a plaything. Unwanted alive. Dead, good only for what his body could give. Touch, touch. Dirty boy to respond. Bad son. Mother will be cross. She’ll….

_ Dust on the floor and wood in his hand. He’d killed her. Dead, dead, she was dead. She wasn’t meant to be dead. He’d given her life. Why was she dead? Dust on the floor. Dust to dust. He hadn’t even known before then that they turned to dust. Shock. Bewilderment. _

_    “Poor, lost little lamb,” Dru cooed. “I’m your mummy, now, little Willy. Come to mummy, and I’ll make it all better.” _

   Spike whimpered and crouched, clutching at his head. The chain still around his wrist smacked into his face. Chains…. Chained to a bed while Darla’s hands touch, touch, touch. Darla. Angelus. Can’t say no. Mustn’t say no, or she’ll be so very cross with him. Mother/not-mother, backing him into a corner, touch, touch, touch. Wants what mustn’t be, and claims he’s wanted it all along. Dawn/not-Dawn. Forever young hands and chains.

_ “Look into my eyes. Be in me.... No more nasty memories. Take them all away.” _

   He was bad. Bad, bad man.  _ She _ could fix it. Make him pure. Make him dust. No more bad. She’d come and take it all away. She was  _ the _ guest, after all.

   Spike smiled dreamily as he rose to his feet and started arranging the bodies again. All had to be just so, didn’t it?

 

***

 

   Giles slowly swam towards consciousness, random bits and bobs of song floating disjointedly around him. Sometimes the voice was deep and sometimes high, almost like a child, and it took Giles a moment to realize he was hearing it all in real time rather than fading in and out.

   “Run and catch, run and catch, la-dee-da-dee-da… when the bough breaks, cradle will fall, and down will come baby… caught in the blackberry patch.”

   Giles opened his eyes and was immediately assaulted with a horrible sense of déjà vu. The Crawford Street mansion. He was even tied to a chair in the same bloody room where Angel had tortured him and Drusilla had…. He closed his eyes again, trying to hide from the memory of Jenny. It hadn’t been real, but for that moment during Drusilla’s little game, he’d had Jenny back.

   Closing his eyes only made things worse, made it all the more vivid, so he opened them again, taking in the differences. Dark, this time, but the moon was bright. No Angel or Drusilla, of course, and instead of being in a wheelchair, Spike was pacing about in nothing but his jeans, the remnants of a chain around one wrist. Giles could see him through the open curtain. The vampire was bruised and bleeding in several places, especially the knuckles of his left hand, as if he’d recently been hitting something so hard that he’d hurt himself. The blood looked black in the silver light.

   There were the bodies, hanging from the ceiling like macabre piñatas. The fact that Giles was here at all was proof that Spike could get around the chip if he truly wished to, was willing to take the pain, but Giles suspected the bodies were the ones stolen from the morgue.

   “No, no. That’s not how they go,” Spike mumbled. “Right vexing, it is, nothing in the proper place. I’ve gone and bollocksed everything up. The gift’s ready,” he turned to look at Giles and there was something… off in his gaze. “All trussed up with nowhere to go. But the ambience is all wrong.”

   He crouched down, tongue poking out the corner of his mouth as he held his hands in front of his face, thumbs and index fingers forming a rectangle that he peered at the bodies through. “The art is right. All posed and perfectly perfect as far as that goes, but….” He snapped his fingers. “Ah-ha! It’s the poetry what’s all wrong. Can’t look with Angel eyes or it’s all gone to rot.”

   “Spike, you need to let me go,” Giles said, voice carefully firm.

   If he hadn’t known better, he would have said the vampire was drunk. But, no. Spike tended to be either a weepy or affectionate drunk depending on his mood and circumstances. This was… Giles wasn’t sure  _ what _ it was.

   “Let you go?” Spike growled and stalked towards him with predatory grace before plonking himself on Giles’s lap, straddling his legs and staring straight into his eyes with disturbing intensity. Fever bright and shadowed both at the same time. Something had caught hold of the vampire, some fey mood that had him running full tilt along the edges of sanity, if he hadn’t gone tumbling over already.

   He leaned in closer, to the point where Giles almost thought he was going to try to kiss him. Or bite him. Could he kill, in this state? Would he eat him, despite the pain of the chip? His cool weight atop him felt strange, oppressive. 

   Then Spike nuzzled his cheek and whispered in his ear. “Can’t let you go. There’d be no gift for the girl. Girl has to have a gift at the going away party.” He laughed, a soft brush of cool air against Giles’s skin. “I get to be the cake. Eat it all up. Take it all in.” He paused, tensing, cringing. His face twisted. “Touch, touch. I’m just flesh to all of you. You like what I can do for you, yeah? Do you want what the girls want? What Angelus wanted, mate? Or just to use my strength to fight your demons? Maybe both?”

   “Spike….”

   Spike pulled away and caught up the trailing end of the chain, pressing it against Giles’s throat, not quite hard enough to cause any damage. “No, no, no. They’ve all the others gone. Wandered off, the selfish buggers, left her all alone. You don’t get to go. You’ve to stay and watch her, watcher.”

   Buffy. This was about Buffy. Of course it was. So this was all he could offer her. All he had left. Just another person to be saved. “She doesn’t need me,” he said, throat pressing uncomfortably against the chain. “She and the others, in the eyes of the law, they are adults, now. They must learn to stand on their own two feet while I live my own life. It’s the way of things. To be anything otherwise would be… unseemly.”

   “Look at you,” Spike sneered in disgust. He stood up and started pacing again. “Tryin’ to be all stiff upper lip about it all. Well, let me tell you, bucko, I’ve been English a hell of a lot longer than you, and it’s all… ‘s all rubbish, it is! Just… just  _ rubbish. _ Bottle up your emotions. Good at that one, aren’t you, Rupert? You empty the bottles right down your gullet and hide your feelings inside, cork ‘em up all good and proper.”

   Spike was absolutely correct, of course. But what else could Giles do? He was meant to be the strong one, the one they all leaned on. He couldn’t do it, not anymore. And now that he’d failed them all, the only thing he  _ could _ do was shove off and leave them to it. His dear children. It was time for them to grow up and leave the nest before the nest crumbled under them.

   “Can’t feel, can’t love. ‘S not  _ proper _ . Stupid boy with his head in the clouds,” Spike ranted. “Not supposed to look for the beauty. Just focus on the ugly. Why do they always want to make it so  _ ugly _ ?” he spat, eyes wild as he looked at Giles. “Nothing wrong with a boy loving his mum. It’s not  _ like _ that! Not filthy! You keep your dirty, dirty thoughts away from her!”

   He flung out his arm and the chain whipped through the air, clipping Giles along the side of the head. It drew blood and sent Spike staggering back before falling into a moaning heap on the floor, clutching at his own head.

    “That’s what it’s all about,” Spike practically sobbed out. “You love her, and you stay, watching her die by inches. But you  _ stay _ ! Because that’s what family does. You let her lean on you, and when it’s too much… when you’ve been up all night crying because you know she’s going to be… to be  _ gone _ …. You lean on each other. Sit by her feet with your head on her knee, what’s the harm, where’s the ugly? But they don’t  _ see _ .” Spike crawled back towards the chair and put his hands on Giles’s knees as he stared into his eyes again. “Even she doesn’t see. Take, take, take. Make it all obscene. Give and take is what it is. You have to look for the beauty, not the ugly.”

   Giles stared into those mad blue eyes, still locked onto his as Spike tilted his head to rub his cheek along his thigh, and something clicked. He was fairly certain they weren’t talking about Buffy anymore, but it still applied. Watching her die by inches…. Wasn’t that what being a watcher was all about? Watching your slayer inch ever closer to death? Give and take. He’d dealt with Buffy’s death by giving what he could of himself, until there had been nothing left to give. So he was running away. 

   But maybe that wasn’t the only option. Buffy had broken in her grief, but now she was coping, with Tara and her therapy group. Willow had been lost in the magic, but she had asked for help. Maybe… maybe he could lean on them once in awhile, like Spike was leaning on his leg now, humming snatches of a song. 

   “I heard a young maid crying… crying, crying… how could you use a poor maiden so? Use a man. Use a demon. How could you use a poor demon so?”

   Giles looked down. They’d been leaning on Spike since before Buffy had died. Almost every night, bring Spike in to patrol, send him off to train the Buffybot, care for Dawn, kill the vampires for us, Spike. And since Buffy’s return… Giles realized the vampire had been shunted away. After Dawn had died, no one had realized she was in his crypt because no one had spoken to him in nearly a month. None but Tara, apparently. 

  “Bottle it all up, old man. Don’t feel it, not real. You don’t feel it. It’s not. It’s not love.”

  Giles opened his mouth, almost wanting to say that he was sorry. But no. This was a demon who had beat and kidnapped him, he had no business feeling sorry… but still. He closed his eyes, trying to sort his jumbled feelings. But still…. 

_ I’m sorry, _ he thought. And despite all the reasons he shouldn’t, he was fairly certain he meant it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll.


	31. Boyfriend

 

   Xander sat in the front seat of his used brown sedan, staring up at a mansion he’d thought he was done having to deal with. The mansion at Crawford Street was strange and beautiful, built during the stock bubble of the 1920's, in a style Willow had once told him was Art Duko. Or... no, didn’t sound quite right, but in any case, there had always been something off about it. It had been abandoned after the crash, and then danced through owners, never really being properly lived in since then. Xander suspected it was impossible to heat, and he himself knew how dank it could get in there. Really, it was a better style of place for vampires than it was for people.

   Angel, in his way, was as ostentatious as Dracula.

   As always when his thoughts turned to Dracula, Xander shuddered. Thrall was a terrible thing to be under. The spiders he’d eaten... ugh. What was it about vampires that made them want to have people under their control? The evil didn’t make sense to him. Even if people were food, Xander didn’t go around tormenting cattle and making them think he was sexy.

   Okay, that was it. He couldn’t just keep sitting here. He cautiously got out of the car and slowly approached the mansion. He crept down through the garden, and along the wall, step by cautious step, trying not to break a twig or scuff his feet or anything.  _ Okay, good job on the sneaky, Xan-man, _ he congratulated himself as he got to the window. Then he peered inside and nearly had a heart attack right on the spot. Spike was  _ right there _ on the other side of the window, staring at him.

_ Oh god, oh god, oh god! Chip. He has a chip. He can’t hurt me. _ Except he could apparently do  _ something _ because he had Giles and everyone was freaking out about it. All of that passed through Xander’s mind in an instant that seemed to take forever. But it was an instant too long. Spike shoved his hand through the glass with an earth-shattering – or at least a glass-shattering – sound and grabbed the front of Xander’s shirt.

   “Well, well, slayer’s boy come to spy, have you?” Spike’s eyes looked wrong. Xander almost wished he was vamped up; the yellow hadn’t been near as spooky as this shadowy stuff. “The party’s not started yet. You tell her, though, boy. Ol’ Spike has her watcher safe and sound. If he stays that way, though?” Spike cocked his head and…  _ giggled _ . It filled Xander with the screaming heebie-jeebies. “He’ll be fine, ‘s long as she comes before daybreak and does what a slayer ought.”

   He reached out to pat Xander on the head with his other hand. It was almost as creepy as the giggle. Something was very seriously wrong here, and Xander’s skin crawled.

   “Be a good lad and help us out here. You tell her. Good boy. Tell her I’ve been bad. Said no when I ought not to have. But now there will be a party, and Slayer can have her cake and her gift. ‘S all wrapped up with nary a scratch… well, no, a slight scratch or two, but right as rain, really.” He let go of Xander’s shirt with a soft sound that was almost erotic. “Time to bag me another slayer.”

   Spike retreated from the window then, deliberately running his forearm along the jagged bits of glass before laughing and wandering deeper into the mansion. Xander bolted fast enough that he was out of breath by the time he got back to his car even though it wasn’t far at all. Oh god, that had been weird. And pants-wettingly terrifying, though using the bathroom before he’d headed here had helped him out in that department.

   He’d just managed to get back into the car and catch his breath when he saw Buffy, running full tilt towards where he was parked. He got back out, then stepped out of her path since her first instinctive move was usually an aggressive one. He’d had enough being grabbed by small blondes for one night, thank you very much. Luckily, she seemed to have control of herself. She slowed to a stop before she even reached him, then took a second to just breathe. If she’d run all the way from the library like Willow had said, that was a serious jog.

   “I’m ready with the stakeage. I havey the axe,” Xander said, pulling it out of the car. Like an idiot, he’d left it there when he went to scout… or rather advertise his presence like a blithering idiot begging to be added to the kidnap count. Why the hell had Spike let him go, though?

   “I don’t want you fighting,” Buffy said. “I just need you to get Giles out of there, just like last time.”

   “You nearly died last time,” Xander said. “And you did have to kill–” He cut himself off so as not to reopen old wounds, but she didn’t seem to be bothered.

   “Killing is something I’m good at,” Buffy said. “Come on.”

   “You’re not ready,” Xander said. He’d noticed this about Buffy, she just jumped in feet first. He wished she’d just waited at the library for him to pick her up, it wouldn’t have taken more than a few minutes, and she could have saved that energy for the fight. But that wasn’t Buffy’s style. She was impatient, and liked to get into things. (And he didn’t want to think about who else that reminded him of....) “Here.” He pulled out the thermos of water he’d stashed in the car for this purpose. “Spike’s not going to kill Giles, he needs him alive.”

   “He could be torturing him,” Buffy said.

   “He’s not,” Xander said. He gave her a quick lowdown on what Spike had said when he’d caught him. “And yes, I know, I shouldn’t have gone up there. Xander the idiot. But at least we have a better idea of what Spike’s after.”

   “Me,” Buffy said. “But why this, why like  _ this?  _ It doesn’t make any sense.  _ None _ of this makes any sense!” Finally she paused and took the thermos of water. “But I guess this means I can catch my breath.” She swallowed and looked up at the mansion, leaning against the car. “I think I have a fight to prepare for.”

   As she drank, Xander regarded her. She didn’t seem angry. She seemed hard, steel. He felt as if he was dealing with the Buffybot again, only without the cheerful smiles.

   “Buffy, why are we playing this again?”

   Buffy looked down.

   “Why would Spike want to call you out, why kidnap Giles, why bring him here of all places? What’s happened?”

   “If I knew, I’d tell you,” Buffy snapped, but there was something she wasn’t saying. He could sense it. (He’d been sort of sensing it for weeks now....)

   “Buffy? Is there something going on with you and Spike?”

   Buffy mumbled an answer quickly, something about “What would make you say that?” and Xander shook his head.

   “I don’t know, maybe it was your eloquent Perry Mason Spike defense the other day.”

   Buffy said nothing, just stared out into the night, and Xander lost his patience. “Just tell me!”

   “No!” Buffy yelled back. “Maybe,” she followed up. “A little bit. I was... ugh! Gah, why does this always happen?”

   The other shoe dropped hard. “Are you in love with him?”

   Buffy closed her eyes.

   “Are you?”

   “Is that really what you’re asking?” Buffy asked. “Or are you asking if I fucked him? Because yeah. Satisfied?”

   He hadn’t been asking that. He would have assumed the answer already to be no if anyone had asked. He’d thought, if anything, there might have been a kiss. He could have dealt with a kiss, he’d seen those before, under that spell of Willow’s. But... Buffy... and Spike... and that word that started with an F...? He felt like he’d been hit. “You... you.... Is  _ that _ why this happened?”

   Buffy clenched her fists. “I don’t know. I really don’t know, it shouldn’t be! It doesn’t make sense!”

   “Buffy, how could you?”

   Buffy glared at him. “How could  _ you _ ? Thousand year old vengeance demon, I thought I made that point!”

   “But after what happened last time–”

   “It wasn’t Spike last time!” Buffy said. “It was another demon. And you really don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to dating demons, Xander.” Her ire died. “It was just… he kept being there. Right  _ there,  _ and.... You should see him, with Dawn, he’s... he’s a dad! And he’s  _ good _ at it.”

   “I have seen him with her,” Xander said. “And you’re right, but that’s not... he’s good with an evil teenager. He was good with a crazy psycho killer, too. That doesn’t make him a good  _ guy _ . I didn’t think that made him–” he started with the F sound and just couldn’t say it. Not about  _ Spike _ . “Dating material.”

   She looked grim.

   “And now we’re in to this again!” Xander said. “Really, how could you do that?”

   “Me?” Her grim look turned to a glare. “I am getting sick and tired of every god damn thing that goes wrong in my miserable love life being seen as all my fault. Angel goes bad, it’s all my fault I fucked him. Not that he decided to fuck an underage girl, and then indulged in the evil instead of fighting it like Spike does. No. It’s my fault. Riley starts to cheat on me. It’s all my fault because I didn’t make him feel  _ needed _ . Not that he’s an emotionally abusive prick with an adrenaline problem. For god’s sake, Xander, if Spike jumped head first into evil again, why can’t it just be because that’s  _ Spike _ ?”

   Xander hadn’t realized that was quite what he was saying. It did... sound like it now that she put it that way. “That... wasn’t really what I meant.”

   “Wasn’t it? You always blame me. You always put the responsibility on _ me _ . I mean, god, I’m supposed to be dead! Why couldn’t you have just left me there?”

   “Oh, come on, we weren’t going to leave you in hell, Buffy.”

   “You don’t know where I was,” Buffy said wearily.

   Xander blinked. Did she just say...? “Buffy...?”

   “Just forget it,” Buffy said. “This isn’t my fault. It can’t be, okay? And for the record, Angel and Riley weren’t my fault, either.”

   “I never said they were.”

   “You all thought they were,” Buffy said. “Hell, _ I  _ thought they were.”

   “The Angel thing... you couldn’t have known,” Xander said. Buffy labeling herself an underage girl during the whole thing... Xander hadn’t thought about that at the time. He’d just been kind of jealous and wished he could get laid, too. (And when he finally had been, it had been that ugly, sordid thing with Faith that left him feeling like a cheap whore... before he was attacked....)  But Buffy had been really young during the whole Angel thing, now that he thought about it. He had been too. “As for Riley, I....” He gulped. “I actually wanted to apologize for that. I... I didn’t know you felt he was abusive.”

   “I  _ didn’t _ feel he was abusive, Xander,” Buffy said. “I should have, but I didn’t. I didn’t even recognize it. I was like you, I thought he was a really great guy.”

  “You thought…?” Now Xander was confused. If that wasn’t what she was upset about…?

   “Yeah. I thought he was nice, because... because he kept saying he was, and he kept saying he was there for me, and if I’d just accept him that it was all going to work out, and that this was a normal healthy relationship. And the only reason it wasn’t working was  _ me _ . It had to be me, right? But now I look at it, and god. That whole thing was toxic from the get-go.”

   “How? I mean, you said the whole TA thing, which... I didn’t really get that.”

   “You’re not in college,” Buffy said. “He had  _ direct _ control over grading my papers, for a class I had to pass. It’s like being asked out by your boss. If you’re scared of getting fired, you can’t say no.”

   Xander really  _ hadn’t _ seen that at the time. “But you’re not the kind of girl to be intimidated by that kind of thing.”

   “I wasn’t, but I could have been. Come on, you knew girls in high school who would feel pressured by that, didn’t you? Hell, even Willow, before all the magic. What if one of her teachers had come up to her and said  _ You have to date me or you’ll get a bad grade? _ Wouldn’t she have felt she had no choice?”

_ Before _ the magic.... “Yeah, probably,”  Xander conceded. He knew how important grades were to Willow, and before Buffy had come along she hadn’t known how to assert herself. “Was that it, though? Just the TA thing?”

   “Well, no. It was the whole thing. I mean, back before it all started properly, even. I just wanted to date someone, someone normal. I thought... if I can keep a person out of the demon slaying part of my life, like I kept Mom out, then things could work. But then it turns out he’s all commando guy, and I  _ knew _ it was going to make things too complicated. He was too mixed up in all the slayage, and that’s  _ my  _ territory. I  _ knew _ it was doomed. So, I told him I didn’t want to date him, and he wouldn’t accept that.”

   “Well, that’s just persistence.”

   “When he’s telling me I don’t know my own mind?” Buffy asked. “ _ You _ were persistent, but you didn’t tell me I was stupid for not wanting to date you! You treated me like a real person, you gave me credit for my own autonomy and agency.”

   Neither of those were words Buffy would have used before she started therapy. They made Xander feel uncomfortable. “But he really loved you, Buffy. He respected you, he said he did.”

   “He said he did, and then talked down to me constantly. Even immediately, he said I was a coward for being sensible, and I wasn’t in high school any more and I shouldn’t listen to any of those doom-and-gloom lessons I learned the hard way back then, because  _ he  _ knew better than that, and  _ he _ wasn’t going to take no for an answer. And then he said, like it was a really big deal I should be all proud of him for this,  _ I’m not going to force myself on you, _ like... that was an option? And that I couldn’t stand alone, I needed to lean on people.”

   “Well, I actually agree with that,” Xander said.

   She glared at him, “I’m not enough by myself?” she said pointedly. “Followed by,  _ And if you weren’t so self-involved, you’d see that _ .”

   “Okay, that is pretty condescending.”

   “I know, right? He was always doing shit like that. And I didn’t...  _ get _ it, I didn’t see it! I mean, my last boyfriend had been two hundred years older and really was an experienced creature of the night who actually knew shit, and I’d just gotten to accept that was normal guy behavior. And good god, worst person to base normal guy behavior on, the vampire who targeted an underage girl and...” she stopped, and put her head in her hands. “Oh, god, shut me up. Shut me up, I don’t want to say this.”

   If they’d had a slightly different relationship, Xander realized, he’d have kissed her right then. But given the circumstances, and the conversation they were in the middle of having, he realized that impulse was a little rapey. Autonomy and agency... those were really scary words.

   He reached into his pocket instead and found a smooshed, half-eaten candy bar. “Here.”

   Buffy stared at it, as if it had just appeared through a dimensional portal. She took it, and bit into it, chewed, and swallowed. “Thanks,” she said. “I didn’t want to go there.”

   Xander didn’t say that by even standing outside this mansion, they were already there. He suspected that was kind of the point. Spike had to have done this on purpose, dragging in Acathla and Angel and kidnaping Giles all over again. The emotionally abusive stuff Buffy was saying about Riley was disturbing enough. The actively-abusive-evil-vampire-boyfriend was the fertile ugly ground which Riley had apparently planted his condescending ugly seeds in. Riley had been so much better than Angel, Xander had been so happy for her... but that by itself didn’t make the relationship _ good _ .

   “I’m sorry,” Xander said. “I really didn’t see any of that stuff.”

   “Yeah, you did,” Buffy said. “You just didn’t see it as bad.”

   “That’s not fair.”

   “No, it is. I didn’t see how bad it was, either. You all bought into it, and I encouraged you to, so I can’t even blame you.”

   “What do you mean we bought into it?”

   Buffy shook her head with a resigned sigh. “Like, I’d say we needed to go do something, and you’d all say, _ Let’s go get Riley’s opinion, _ as if I couldn’t make a decision on my own. But I was doing the same thing, it was sick. I let him manipulate me, and manipulate my friends, and make me feel as if everything that went wrong was all my fault. Always. He was… it was like he was slowly killing me.”

   “What do you mean?”

   “I mean I couldn’t be me. I’d hide how strong I was. All the time. I was scared to be me around him, because he’d get offended. It got so bad, I was even holding back when I was on patrol. I think I even put myself in danger a few times, trying to play weak for him, scared it would hurt his feelings. If you’re scared to perform to your full potential around someone? That’s not a healthy relationship.”

  “But why were you scared? I mean, what would happen?” 

  “What always happened. He’d get huffy, and it would all be my fault. Like... I didn’t tell him about Dawn, and he got all huffy, because I was trying to protect my sister, and that wasn’t my place. Wasn’t _ my  _ place? It wasn’t his! And... he got pissy because I was too busy worrying about my dying mother to coddle him and spend boyfriend-time. He wasn’t my top priority right then, and he had no right to think he should be! I mean, you and Willow weren’t bitching because I wasn’t making special Bollywood-Movie nights.”

   “To be fair, we both had girlfriends. Riley kinda didn’t.”

   Buffy glared. “Yeah. He did.”

  “But I think he just wanted to be there for you, and you wouldn’t let him.”

  “Xander, if you want to be there for me, you be there for me! You don’t pressure me into making sure  _ you’re _ the one I break down around. I had to stay strong. If I broke down I was going to stay broken, but he wanted me to break. That was it, he wanted me to break so that he could stand me up. He didn’t want me to  _ not break _ in the first place.”

  Xander was trying to make sense of it. He actually couldn’t decide if Buffy was right, or Riley. It sounded reasonable, to want to be there to support someone, to be the center of their needs, to be their rock. That was loving. But… to demand that they break so that you can be that support sounded selfish, and… well, it sounded evil. “Evil” and “Riley” weren’t words he’d put together before. “Evil” belonged to Spike. Spike, who  _ had _ kept being Buffy’s rock, now that he thought about it; over Dawn, over Glory, over the suicide. While Riley and Angel had just gone, once dating Buffy had been off the table for them, Spike had kept being there to support Buffy, without any expectation of actually winning her. Kind of like Xander himself, now that he thought about it; willing to be her friend if not her lover.

   But Riley had demanded something else, and had abandoned her when he didn’t get it. Had Xander really been promoting something which at its core was evil? What the hell did that make  _ him _ ?

   An idiot, at the least. He hoped nothing worse. What Buffy had said before, about them not knowing where she’d been when she was dead….

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t realize that kind of thing was going to happen.”

  “I did,” she said. “The very things I’d told him were going to happen had started to happen. And of course he blamed me for them.”

  “I think he just wanted to love you.”

  “He wanted to love someone who wasn’t  _ me _ ,” Buffy said. “I loved that guy. I gave him everything I was, everything I  _ had _ that wasn’t needed by my family and the world and my really sucky slayer job. And he knew when we started dating that I had a family and a world and really sucky slayer job. But he decided to date me anyway, and then bitch about it, self-destruct, and claim it was all my fault I didn’t love him enough.”

   “Did you?”

   “Did I what?” 

   “Love him. He didn’t think you did.”

   “What right had  _ he _ to say how _ I _ felt?” Buffy yelled. “I told him I loved him. I believed it. I gave him everything I was! How is that not enough?” She was red faced with anger now, and it was kind of creeping Xander out. “God! How the hell is it right for anyone else to say what someone is feeling isn’t love, when they think it is? Whose authoritative definition of love gets to  _ count _ ?”  

   “Buffy...” Xander looked over at the mansion. “That kind of carried.”

   “Thought I didn’t love him,” Buffy growled, lower now, but just as angry. “ _ My blood, my body, they needed me. _ ”

   “What?”

   “That was what he said, after I caught him with those vampire whores. Claiming it was all my fault he was cheating, because I didn’t need him like they did.”

   “But… biting. Is that really cheating, though?”

   “ _ Yes _ ,” Buffy said firmly. The word seemed to injure her. “Yes,” she said, more softly. “It’s physical. It matters, Xander. I don’t... know how to explain.” Xander was worried. That scar on Buffy’s neck that Angel had left had faded. Buffy always claimed she didn’t remember the bite, but... there was something there. He’d always been afraid of that. That at some level, Buffy actually  _ wanted _ to be devoured....

   “God,” she said, sounding sad and confused. “The guy was an addict from the start. What did I expect was going to happen?”

   “Riley?”

   Buffy looked startled, and then said, “Well, yeah, him too, I guess. I mean… he was on amphetamines, or whatever the Initiative had him on,” Buffy said. “And okay, that was them, but then he ran away rather than get his heart fixed, which was giving him a constant implanted adrenaline hit. And then it’s  _ my _ fault he goes to get his bite on, and  _ I’m _ not allowed to be mad about it, even, because he’s leaving immediately, and I’d need to get down on my knees or something to keep him.” She rubbed her cheek slowly, where a healing scab was almost gone. “Asshole.”

   “I’m sorry,” Xander said. “I really didn’t realize how bad things were. I... probably shouldn’t have told you to run after him.”

   “One of the most degrading moments of my life,” Buffy muttered, and if she’d slapped him it wouldn’t have made Xander feel any worse. “Thank god I didn’t catch him.”

   “To be fair... it was kind of an old speech,” Xander said.

   “Huh?”

   “Riley told me... um. When you were all helping me move out of my mom’s basement, he said you were the best woman in the world, and you did things to his insides, which... it was really sweet. He said you were the one, and that he really knew it. And then he looked at me all dark and serious and said,  _ But she doesn’t love me _ , and I just... I went cold. I didn’t know what to do, why he’d said that. And I started thinking,  _ Buffy doesn’t know how to show him. She hasn’t told him _ , or something, and I started planning out this speech on how to tell you what you needed to do to keep him.”

   “That was months before.... You mean he didn’t talk to me, but he bitched about it to my best  _ friend _ ?” Buffy said. “What did he expect you to do? Whine about it to me on his behalf? That’s mature!”

   Xander looked down. “I... just thought he was confessing to a buddy or something.”

   Buffy just looked at him. “Xander? Did you and Riley  _ ever _ hang out as just buddies?”

   Xander shook his head no.

   “No. He was trying to manipulate me through my friends. What a jerk!” Then she rubbed her face. “Of course, Angel did the same. I sure can pick ‘em, can’t I.” She looked over at him. “And then you saw us imploding, and trotted out the whole,  _ Break his heart clean or give your whole self _ , speech?”

   “I’d been practicing it for months,” Xander said. “It seemed a waste not to finish it, even though the vampire biting thing kinda threw me.”

   To Xander’s relief, Buffy laughed. Suddenly she lunged forward and hugged him. “I love you, Xander. Believe it, okay?”

   Xander stood there, hugging her, and decided to just check. “You do mean as a friend, right?”

   “Yes.”

   “Okay. Just making sure I wasn’t in some dream universe thing.”

   Buffy chuckled again and pulled away. “Do you really still...?”

   “Well, the idea crosses my mind from time to time,” he confessed. “But with Anya I... well....” Anya. That was a mistake.  He couldn’t think about Anya right now. He forced back the misery and  looked at Buffy. “So. You and Spike, huh?”

   “Well, not  _ now _ !” Buffy said with exaggerated irony. Then she put her hand over her eyes, and Xander was terrified. Steel Buffy scared him. Angry Buffy worried him. But this... oh, god, don’t let her break again. He wasn’t like Riley. He didn’t want her to break just so that he could hold her up. But she controlled it, rubbed her eyes before the tears there turned into outright crying, and straightened up. “I know. You still don’t get it.”

   “I guess I do,” he said. “I mean... you are a lot stronger than any of us, and so is he… and the fact that he’s dead kinda creeps me out, but if it doesn’t bug you....”

   “It bugs me,” Buffy said. “And the evil, it bugs me. And the history, it bugs me. And the fact that he keeps being what I need, and doing what I need done.... It would be so much easier to hate him.” She looked up at the sky. “I’d still want him, but I wish I could hate him.”

   “But you don’t.”

   Buffy looked down.

   “You know... there were times when Anya would say something... something about someone she’d killed. Ripped out their entrails or whatever. And I’d... I’d get totally creeped out. And then she’d smile at me, and it was clear she hadn’t felt the same way about it as I would have. It wasn’t… a human thing she’d done, with human good or bad to it. I... I used to put that down as her being a demon then, but she’s human now. Like she was two different people. I think... I think that was why the Angel/Angelus thing made sense. Not really the same guy.”

   “And Spike doesn’t have that,” Buffy said.

   “Yeah. It’s like Ben and Glory, you know? Ben was an okay guy, and Glory was this evil hellgod. They were different.”

   “But in the end they weren’t,” Buffy said. “Dawn says, by the end, even Ben was evil hellgod.” She looked up. “Do you remember when you were split in two? And you thought you had an evil twin?”

   Xander sagged. “And they were both me.”

   “Yeah. Spike’s like that. And Anya was like that. I think Angel was like that, he just couldn’t face it when he had a soul, so he pushed it aside and pretended it was something else. When a human does that, we call it a dissociative disorder.”

  “Is that fair?”

  Buffy raised her hand. “Who just spent two weeks in a mental ward?”

  “It’s just… magic kinda makes that a little different.”

  “I don’t think so. I think maybe we’re all like that; hell, I have moments when I want to be totally evil.”

   “I don’t think you could, Buffy.”

   Buffy looked up at him. “I could be Faith,” she said. “I wasn’t far from it a few times.” She held up one hand, showing off the red scar on her wrist. “You know, before I did this... thing, I had moments when... I could have done things.... If this thing hadn’t happened to Dawn and pushed me over that edge I was on from rage into despair, I think I might have gone to rage. And who would I have taken that out on? I’m terrified it might have been you or Dawn or Willow.” Then she shook her head. “Probably Spike. He always took my rage. Hell, he probably wouldn’t even have complained. And that’s the problem. When Spike’s good, he’s... he’s one of the best men I know.”

   “But when he’s evil…”

   “One of the worst.”

   “But now he’s up there doing... which?” Buffy didn’t answer. “Looks pretty evil from down here.” 

   “I know. And I don’t know  _ why _ .” She looked up. “Did you see Dawn?”

   “Up there? No.”

   “Any sign of her?”

   Xander shook his head.

   “I wonder if it’s something to do with her. I wonder....” She touched her pocket. “I need to know what’s happened.” She looked over at Xander. “Please. Please, will you get Giles somewhere safe?”

   “I’m not leaving you alone in this.”

   “Xander, it’s just Spike. I’m stronger than him, remember? And the chip, and... look, I just need you to get out.”

   “Buffy...”

   “Xander, if I’m going to die here, there’s no point in you dying, too. If I’m not, I don’t need you to chase around after me making my job harder. Don’t be Riley. Don’t make me play down so that you can keep up.”

   Xander had an ugly feeling when he heard that. It felt like guilt. “Fine. I get Giles out. Do you want me to wait?”

   Buffy shook her head. “I know how to walk home from here,” she said. “Used to do it all the time.”

   Xander felt sick. “When should we start to worry?”

   “You’re worried already.”

   “When do we come check on you?”

   Buffy looked him squarely in the face. She had on her own resolve face, and really... it was ten times scarier than Willow’s.

   “You don’t.”

 


	32. Enemy

 

 

   The jasmine garden was almost as Buffy remembered it. The last time she’d been there, Angel had been doing his sexy Tai-Chi thing (and she was pretty sure he knew how sexy it was, which was why he did it shirtless whenever he knew she was coming over. She hadn’t realized it when she’d still been just eighteen, but a lot of what Angel did seemed kind of... disturbingly calculated now that she thought about it.)

   It was more overgrown than it had been back then, which, yeah, made sense with there being no one around to tend it. Buffy actually had no idea if Angel owned this mansion, or whether as Angelus he’d killed whoever did own it, or if he’d just moved in without asking and no one had ever called him on it.  _ Not that any of this actually matters.  _ Not if Spike had gone rogue. God, Spike…. Why would he…? No, she couldn’t let herself be distracted. 

_ Focus on the mansion. _ The electricity seemed off, but the moon was bright, and one of the things Angel had always liked about this place, and one of the things Spike had bitched about whenever he mentioned it, were the big windows. She could see well enough, partially because she had nifty slayer night vision.

   Xander did not. He was going to be nearly blind in there, Buffy realized. As they approached the window, he pointed. Spike had been  _ right there  _ when he’d come to – as Xander had put it – “scout.”

   Spike didn’t appear to be there now, and the French window was open. “Xander–”

   “Shh!” Xander hissed.

   “Xander, Spike has to already know we’re here. He set this up, you announced our presence, there’s no element of surprise. Hey!” She waved into the darkness. “Slayer on the prowl.”

   “Buffy?” The voice was distant, but strong. Not Spike. “I’m here!”

   “Hey, Giles!” Buffy called out. “You okay in there?”

   “I was knocked unconscious and I’ve a fierce headache, so everything seems normal,” Giles called. “But I’ve been tied up.”

   “Where’s Spike?”

   “I’m not sure at the moment, though–”

   “Yeah, we know,” Buffy said. “He’s here.” They came in, Xander almost breathing down her neck.

   “Oh, my god,” he said as they crept into the moon-washed mansion. Ghostly covered furniture loomed whitely in the darkness, and three... no, five... no, six sinister figures hovered above the ground, naked and gruesome. “Are those  _ bodies _ ?”

   “Looks like,” Buffy said. She was too on the mark to be disturbed by them right now. Her slayer senses were on high alert, and she knew there was a vampire here. Powerful one. She thought she could recognize Spike’s signature by now, anyway, though despite all the reams of slayer lore Giles had shown her on it, Buffy had never been very sure of her skills in that area. “Where was Giles last time?” She’d been too busy fighting Angelus and his cronies to care.

   “There,” Xander pointed at an arch that led to Angel’s bedroom. Made sense.

   “Okay. We go get him. If Spike attacks, you keep going. I fight.”

   “If,” said a voice from out of the darkness. “You’ve got an awful lot of faith dancing around in that little word. If.”

   Buffy pushed Xander ahead of her, because Spike’s words had come from the other side of the main room, opposite where Giles was. Xander fumbled ahead in the dark, making a disgusted  _ yeep _ when he bumped into one of the hanging corpses.

   “It’s okay, Spike, you called, we came. You got me. Now Xander’s just gonna get Giles and go.”

   “Don’t care about the boy,” Spike’s voice came again. “Wouldn’t ever have bothered to bite him anyway.” The near silent pad of bare feet, and Spike’s voice came from another corner of the dark room. “But maybe I can just hunt him down when we’re finished here. Play a few games. Set up a few traps. Without the slayer, this place will be nothing more than a slaughterhouse.” The hair stood up on the back of Buffy’s neck. Spike’s voice sounded... wrong. “Started already. Like my meat?” He chuckled. “Oh, I know you do, slayer.”

   “Spike, you–”

   Spike didn’t give her a chance to respond. He swooped down almost from above her, and the blow he landed was hard, direct, and... oh,  _ shit _ . The chip didn’t seem to fire. It didn’t fire, and there were bodies. Buffy’s stomach twisted. In the back of her mind, she’d always dreaded this. That the chip would fail and she’d have to… have to….

   Buffy pulled her thoughts away. She had to stay hard, and she had to rethink. She hadn’t been expecting that kind of blow. She’d expected wrestling, grappling, the kind of almost-hurting-but-not-quite stuff Spike had been throwing back at her since the chip was installed, while she freely punched him in the nose and the face and did whatever she wanted to him. Spike hit her again while she was too busy being thinky. She sailed back and hit the wall, almost dropping her stake. 

   “You... you did something to the chip!” Buffy said, picking herself up. “It’s a trick.”

   “Right-oh,” Spike said. “Big bad’s back. Ready to start the full-scale slaughter, just as soon as the slayer’s out of my face.”

   Xander came out of the back room then, with a weary looking Giles in tow. Other than a minor welt that had barely split the skin, he seemed fine. “We’ve your back, Buffy,” her watcher said.

   “Thanks, but get the hell out!” Buffy snapped.

   “Come on, G-man,” Xander said. He tugged on Giles’s arm. “I promised.”

   “But he’s lying, Buffy,” Giles said. “The chip  _ does _ work, I saw it. There’s something... he’s not well.”

   The incipient bruise on Buffy’s cheek belied  _ that _ statement. “Just get out,” she snarled, jumping between them and where she thought Spike was. And just in time, because he came at her again. She was a little too busy trading blows to pay much attention after that, but the weight in the air behind her cleared. Civilians out of the crossfire.

   Spike was in top form. His blows came fast and heavy and furious, and she wasn’t warmed up yet. She let him push her back, back, through the macabre decor. 

   “What is it?” she asked, ducking, blocking. “What did you do? How did you do it?”

   “Mind over matter, slayer,” Spike growled. She couldn’t see his face very clearly in the dark. He wasn’t vamped up, that was all she could tell. “Just decided I wouldn’t let it best me.”

   “Right,” Buffy said. “You’ve been crawling around sipping pigs blood all this time because the pain wasn’t all that bad.” She twisted and kicked at him. He flew back and fell, then looked up at her. Why the hell wasn’t he wearing his coat? Or a shirt? What was this? “You let us chain you in Giles’s bathtub because you could fight through it any time.”

   He chuckled, and the sound was deeply disturbing. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, climbing back to his feet. “Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe it’s just that it’s stopped working on  _ you _ , slayer mine.” He attacked again. He hit, and she blocked, and stepped back again, still warming up.

   “Me?”

   “Yeah.” He smiled, and it looked wicked. And not in the good way. “Figured that out when I had you on your back on that gravestone, spread open for the niblet to watch me at you.”

   Of the two revelations, one bothered Buffy more than the other. “Dawn was  _ watching _ ?”

   “‘Course she was,” Spike said. “My little vampire baby, all grown up, watching her big sis, as I scratched my nails down that hot, wet little body, and proved to us both that I could do whatever I wanted to you, chip or no.”

   Buffy was disgusted, with herself, with him, almost disgusted with Dawn. But despite her feelings on the subject, the other matter was more pressing. “What did you do to it?”

   “Nothing. Din’t have to do a thing. Nothin’ wrong with it at all. It’s  _ you _ . You came back all wrong.”

   Wrong. He couldn’t be…. Was he right? She hadn’t felt the same since she came back, like her life wasn’t hers and her calling wasn’t hers and her friends weren’t hers and... and god, she’d been fucking a demon in a graveyard and had dared to feel all right about it. What about that was  _ normal _ ?

   “No!” She shouted it, rejecting the idea. “That’s not…. I did not!”

   “Yeah, you did. You’re still dead. Or even a demon thing. Known that for a while now. That you’re wrong. And now... now I can finally take my own.” 

   Spike backhanded her, and she was pushed back again, through the little copse of corpses. She ran into one and it fell, the body ripping from the hook he’d had it hung on. She looked down on it in the moonlight; an older woman, marks on her body... were those autopsy marks? What the hell?    

   Spike hadn’t killed these people. These bodies were stolen. Okay, still icky, but why?  _ Why? _

   “What’s going on, Spike?” she demanded, taking her stake more firmly in her hand. He was circling around again, vanishing into the darkness like a whisper before lunging back out again. Did he realize that every time he did that she nearly dusted him before she could even think straight? The startled slayer reflex was instinctive, she didn’t even have to think about it. It was a dumb move on his part. She was actually pissed about it – she’d thought he knew her better. He was a better fighter than this, dammit! “Why are you doing this?”

   “Vampire, pet.” Spike appeared in a shaft of moonlight, looking like a specter himself. Between him and the hung corpses, there wasn’t much to choose. “This is what I do.”

   “Yeah,” she said, annoyed. “But why  _ now _ , why like this? And why  _ here, _ of all places? If you wanted to kill me, just come up to the house. God, come chat me up, and break my neck. You could have killed me last night. Why didn’t you?”

   “No glory in that, pet. But here?  _ Here? _ Where it all started, where Angel lost to you, oh, yes. There’s poetry in that.” He hit her, and she staggered back. “I can win where Angel lost. ‘Sides, this is the only way it’ll work.” 

   He struck her again, and it hurt, and she hit him back, and it hurt him. It went like that for a moment, back and forth, pain for pain, and then he kicked her back, hard, and her breath was knocked from her as she hit the wall. She pushed away from it, not wanting to be cornered against a surface. 

   “Knew the best way to take you down,” he said, voice low and dark as he circled her like a cat stalking its prey. “Learned it at the right hand of the master, I did. Angelus said, only way to take this slayer down is to love her. Well, I played that up right, I did, just like him. Just. Like. Him.”

   Buffy didn’t like that. “You don’t know what Angel and I had.”

   Spike scoffed. “You didn’t listen to Angelus for half a year, bragging about torturing you. Can you really just dismiss that? Can you really just pretend he’s all different with a soul? When he hunted you and stalked you just the same? He just  _ wanted _ to burn out his soul, that’s the only reason he hunted you down in the first place.”

   Since that spoke loudly to the very same doubts Buffy had been feeling herself lately, his words scraped at her like a spoon to the heart. The mental ward, the group meetings, the stories the people had told, the horrors they shared, the pain they had experienced, it had all seemed so  _ normal _ to her. It had echoed her own life story so perfectly, and there had been no magic and no demons and no lost souls to confuse things. Just people, and toxic relationships, and abusive partners, and lies and lies and lies heaped upon weak and vulnerable people. 

  She had always thought of herself as strong, and she was. But she’d had her vulnerabilities, too. Youth, romantic ideals, loneliness. If anyone had wanted to prey on those things... they would have done exactly what Angel had done. She knew that, because she’d heard the stories of victims of perfectly unsupernatural attacks which echoed the exact same patterns. And those attacks had resulted in mental breaks, depression, suicide attempts....

   “Angel loved me,” Buffy said, the words sounding like lies even as she said them.

   “Angelus loathed you,” Spike taunted. “Scrubbed off your love in the fountain, he did, and I watched him do it.” He crept up to her. “And you know. You  _ know _ I’m not lying.”

   Souls, soullessness, love, hate. The words hit hard, striking at her emotions harder than any blow to her flesh. She prefered the physical pain. It grounded her, gave her something to focus on. 

   “He was right about you. Just give you a line and puppy dog eyes, and you’ll roll right over and spread your legs like a cheap whore. ’Oh dearest Buffums, I’ll stop being a bad man, just for you.’" He batted his eyes at her mockingly. "And you lapped that bollocks all up. I’m a vampire, pet. I  _ like _ being evil! It’s what I am. It’s  _ who _ I am. Not gonna change for the likes of you.”

   Now the pain was boiling towards rage. Lies? All Spike’s claims of love hadn’t been just mistaken obsession, he was saying they were outright  _ lies? _ She shook her head in automatic denial. “You sure played the part damn well. Quite the Oscar performance there, DeCaprio. Months, years of this. Glory. Dawn. Killing vampires all summer.”

   “I just like to kill, pet. Something I’m going to show you, slowly, and painfully, very soon. I’m going to take my time with my third slayer.”

   Buffy laughed. “Oh. Your job to kill the slayer, huh? Not just follow me around making moon eyes?”

   Spike laughed and there was still something off about it – about everything. “Thought you were something special?” he mocked. “Poor little self-important slayer. You’re just another notch in my belt. I bagged me two before you. My little ‘problem’,” he pointed towards his head with two stiff fingers, “may have meant I couldn’t kill you, but I’ve always been adaptable, love. Couldn’t catch you one way….” He leered at her as he curled his tongue behind his teeth. “Just had to do it another, didn’t I?”

   “You’re a pig, Spike.”

   “And you’re the sow,” he shot back. “Opening up for my big, hard schwanzstucker. But now I’ve porked you, I don’t need to play these games anymore.”

   “Games?” Buffy came up and slugged him, hard, hard, harder, pushing him back. “That’s all this has been? You. Playing  _ games? _ ”

   He punched back, swinging wildly, leaving – god, did he  _ realize _ he was leaving his chest wide open for a stake? Again, Buffy was irritated by it. Violently. Irritated. 

   “Yes! Games!” he barked. “Been playing the long con with you. Get you to trust me. Get the shag-you notch, and that makes killing you all the sweeter, don’t it?”

   “You really think you’re going to win this?” she asked. “The way you keep leaving yourself open?”

   He belatedly seemed to realize he was doing it, and gave a very lame twist which sort of shielded himself. Was he injured? Was that why he was being so reckless? Still,  _ still, _ none of this made any sense, not what he was doing, or what he was saying, or how he was fighting.

   “Think you can do it, then?” he asked. “Dust me? Did your mates give you permission? Always running to them and askin’ ‘mother-may-I’.” He punched, hard. “They tell you what to feel.”  _ Strike. _ “Who to date.”  _ Strike. _ “They even tell you when to live and when to bloody  _ die _ !” Strike, strike,  _ strike _ . He swung, and she ducked, and... and he’d left his back open that time! This was... ugh! She didn’t take the opening. It seemed  _ cheap. _

   He turned, dancing lightly on the balls of his bare feet. “But that’s what a girl like you needs,” he went on. “You know, the sodding  _ bot _ had more personality and independence.” He paused a moment to leer at her. “Better in the sack, too. Red ever gets the old girl back up, you could ask for pointers. Well, assuming you survive our little rumble. Which you won’t, by the by. You haven’t the stones to really take me on.”

   Okay, now he was just trying to piss her off.

   Wait. He really  _ was _ trying to piss her off, wasn’t he? He... god, he  _ knew _ she was more dangerous angry. Was he doing this on purpose? “Got any more little taunts to throw at me?”

   He laughed. “Easy enough to find. You’re a bloody hornet’s nest of insecurities. And right you should be. Worthless.”

   “Worthless, huh?” It didn’t hurt as much as it would have, not now that her suspicions were well and truly roused. 

   “Yeah! Just as well you couldn’t get back into uni. You really haven’t the brains for it. First go round, had to be the dean thought he’d get at least a gander at them perky tits if he let you in. Maybe that’s why you shagged your TA. Couldn’t get a passing grade otherwise, trull?”

   Now he was bringing  _ Riley _ into this?

   “Or maybe your mum played a bit of how’s-your-father with the dean? That what she always had to do to get you by in this world?  Is that how she got you back into high school? Opening up to that troll Snyder who worked with the mayor?”

   “How did you know about Snyder? And my high school! and...”

   “How do you think I knew where to attack you first, pet? The mayor knew all the vamps in Sunnydale. Let them do as they pleased, too. Made the whole place a haven for us. And you, you’re the outsider. Never really fit in, did you. Well, never really fit in anywhere. But then you knew that. That’s why you wanted to shuffle off your worthless mortal coil and go playing off in the nether realms, like the airy-fairy-bubble-headed-pop-gun you are.”

   “You don’t know what I am,” Buffy snapped, but she wasn’t even insulted. This didn’t match  _ any _ of what Spike had been saying, even from the first. Even when he was clear, pure evil, he’d always seemed to think her a worthy kill, if nothing else.

   “I know what you don’t know. You don’t know yourself, you don’t know anyone. Best friends are an idiot and a selfish witch. So ugly to be around you can’t even keep your watcher.” Spike whirled, grabbed her, and spat the next words into her face. His eyes were wild. “I’ll bet your mum was glad to die, just so she wouldn’t have to deal with a freak like you any longer.”

   Okay, whatever the fuck he was doing, he was going too far there. Buffy roared and lunged at him, shoving him off. He struck her, but the blow only glanced, but she was too angry to even use the stake in her hand. She punched him with the hand that held it and he flew back, hitting the wall again.

   He looked up, a grin on his face, as if he’d just won something, rather than pissed her off so badly she had to have broken his ribs. “Not that poor Joyce was all that,” he gasped. “I mean, she couldn’t even keep the wanker what fathered you happy. Not enough to be trapped in a family that included you, anyroad.”

   “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Buffy growled. “Why the hell are you saying these things? You never thought any of this before.”

   Spike picked himself up slowly. “You don’t know what I’ve been thinking, or what I’ve been doing. I’m evil, pet. Straight down to the core, evil even working around this sodding chip. And you, and your blind mates, didn’t even see it.” He paused, to let that sink in, and then, like a stake, he drove it home. “Been makin’ your little sis mine all summer long. And none of your mates noticed a bloody thing.”

   There was something twisted and awful in his tone, and that as much as the words sent numbing chills shivering through her. “You what?” she whispered hoarsely. He couldn’t mean…. Oh, god, all the times she’d left Dawn with him while Glory was looking for her…. No. No, no,  _ no _ . 

   “You heard me. With you out of the way, next best thing was to get it warm in the slayer’s little sis.” 

   The possibility of it horrified her. They  _ had _ given him the opportunity, over and over and over again. Hell,  _ Buffy _ had given him a dozen chances, personally! Evil, evil,  _ evil…! _

   “They left me alone with her all the time,” he said, sounding predatory. “Alls I had to do was talk her into it. Well. Held her down the first time, but nothing so hard it set off the chip. She’s not real strong. I mean, she screamed a bit. But just that first time, just ‘cause she was scared. After that she...” he stopped. He looked away, swallowed, and then his face steeled and he glared back at her. “After that she couldn’t get enough of the old Spike. Told her she liked it, ‘cause I made her feel it, and she ruddy believed me, didn’t she. Down on her knees, just once more, give me one more. Like eldest like youngest, right?”

   His breath was coming hard now, and Buffy felt ill. He stalked closer. “Even kept on with her after you got back. Made her keep her mouth shut about it. And you? You’ve had your head so far up your own arse that you’ve noticed bugger all. And now she’s completely mine.” He laughed, and it made Buffy want to cry. “What, you thought she just  _ happened _ to run into the few little pissant punks who didn’t stay in on Halloween? One day out of the year when her little teenage rebellion should have been relatively safe? News for you, Slayer, I’m still the local big bad in these parts. All the vamps answer to me.”

   Willow  _ had _ said something about that. About how Spike wasn’t as harmless as he’d led them all to believe, chip or no chip... and the thought of him... and Dawn... and  _ Dawn _ . The idea of her screaming beneath a vampire, as he took her... and then of her clawing after Spike... wanting... wanting what... and still so young...! And the idea that Spike had arranged for it? For her death even?

   Spike lowered his head and looked up at her from a set of evil eyes. “I. Took. Her.”

   Mistake.  _ Big _ mistake. Buffy was poisoned with rage. She found she’d launched herself at him without even deciding to do it, forced him bodily against the fireplace, the concrete denting under the force of the blow. He’d gone too far, he’d gone  _ too far _ , he had to have known that she’d....

   He had to have known. He  _ knew _ her. He knew how she fought, he wasn’t like Angelus. He knew going for the heart wasn’t going to make her weaker, it made her stronger. Strong enough to beat him even when he was invincible, like when he had the Gem of Amara. He  _ knew _ not to piss her off like this, and yet he’d done it, and....

   Buffy let him go. She backed off. Was someone making him do this? Who would he try to throw a fight for? “Spike, where  _ is _ Dawn?”

   “How the hell should I care?” Spike roared, and went for her, attacking brutally, hard enough that Buffy had to fight back or have her face broken. She punched, he twisted, and... and he left himself open again. It was like he was doing this on purpose.

   “Because you’re her sire.”

   “Only took her to have something on you!”

   He lunged, and missed, and there he was, open again, like she’d half expected him to be. Buffy tried something. Something stupid, but she was almost sure. She left her throat open. She twisted, missed a kick, pulled back, tilted back her head, and... he didn’t go for it. She tried it again, leaving a spot under her arm open. He didn’t even try to hit the vulnerable spot, just went punching at her face and her arms, places where he couldn’t really damage her. She pulled back. They circled. She tried to size him up. Half naked, dirty, shoeless, what the hell was that on his wrist?

   “You care because you love her,” she said.

   Spike lunged at her, she let him, and he pressed her back against the fireplace. “No,” he said. “You said it yourself. Can’t love without a soul.” 

   He vamped and lunged for her throat, forgetting the stake she had pointed at his heart... which she deflected, because fuck, there was no way any of this could be real. He didn’t rip her throat out, though he could have. Instead he paused when he felt the wood twist, angling down instead of up into his heart. 

   He glared at her through his yellow eyes. “Good god, slayer, get on with it! You fight better than this!”

   Buffy glared back. “So do you.” She pushed off the fireplace and suddenly he was backing away, and he looked more frightened now than he did when she was angry. “Can’t love without a soul?” she said. “Then explain Drusilla. Explain this whole damn thing you’re trying to recreate. Why the hell did you turn on Angelus if it wasn’t for Dru?”

   “Shut up,” he spat. “Just because I hated the ponce. He was going to burn away my food.”

   “The food you haven’t touched in more than two years?” Buffy said. “The same food you weren’t having Dawn fetch for you?”

   “Who says I wasn’t?”

   “Dawn. And I know her face when she lies, she wasn’t lying. She wasn’t lying about you not fucking her, either. You’ve always treated Dawn like she was a treasure, and not like that.” She came at him again. He retreated. “Mom, too. You didn’t have a chip in your head when you came back Senior year. You hung out with Mom and Dawn and cried drunkenly into your hot cocoa. Drunk because you missed Dru. But, no, you couldn’t. Because you didn’t love her. And you killed my family that night, because you’re nothing but evil, right?”

   He really did look scared, now. The demon mask fell from his eyes, leaving them blue and shadowed and helpless.

   Buffy shook her head. “You’re painting a very different picture tonight, Spike. Because when I look back, I see you laughing with my mother at her really stupid stories from the gallery. Not scornfully accusing her of rolling in the hay like a two-bit whore. And I see you battered and bruised from the torture of a hellgod while you tried to protect my sister. And then I hear you promise to protect her until the end of the world. And then I see you still here, still working in Sunnydale, working beside my friends, to do the job I couldn’t do, because I was gone.”

   “Shut up,” he growled. “I explained all that. Just killing! Just the evil. I’m gonna bag a slayer tonight, dammit!”

   “Like you did in the cemetery? Just an ugly, sordid thing, a notch in your belt? It meant nothing to you, you were just marking the territory for this hunt? Even though  _ I’m _ the one who started it?”

   “Hunt!” He jumped for her. “I’m gonna kill you!” He punched her, and punched her, and left himself open yet again. Buffy stepped away, made a dramatic pose, and then... 

   “Oops.” The stake dropped from her hand.

   Spike looked like he might cry. “No. No, don’t, I need that!” He grabbed at it, lifted it, tried to shove it back into her hand.

   Buffy wanted to hug him already. The desperation in his face, the misery, yes, there were definitely tears now. She wouldn’t take the stake.

   “Please!” he whimpered. “Please, let me go out fighting. Don’t make me face the sun. The sun, oh god!”

   Buffy grabbed him by the shoulders and stared at him. What the hell had happened to him? She’d seen too many broken people lately not to recognize it now. “Okay, that’s it. What the hell’s happened?”

   “Do I have to kill you by inches!” Spike roared at her. He grabbed her back, hard, hard enough to bruise. “I’ll do it! I’ll do it, I’ll....”

   Buffy bent her head and looked at him, unafraid. “Do it, then,” she said. “Go right ahead. Bite me.”

   She’d done this for Angel once, she remembered. Not the time he was poisoned when he’d actually done it. But just after she’d found out he was a vampire, in the Bronze, as she dared him... tested him. He’d passed that test, abandoned her throat and eventually killed his own sire that night.

   Spike was soulless, evil, the chip no longer worked where she was concerned. He had killed two slayers in the last century, slaughtered thousands of innocent people, led packs of vampires on brutal raids, had tried to kill Buffy on more than one occasion. She bared her throat to him and dared him to drink.

   And all he did was collapse into tears in her arms.

 

 


	33. Son

 

  Spike knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he should push Buffy away. But her arms were warm and fiercely gentle around him, and he couldn’t seem to do anything but melt against her as the tears poured out of him like the blood from a struggling victim. A struggling victim…. Oh god. He swallowed convulsively, shuddering as the memories assaulted his mind. His mother, fighting against him as he sank his fangs into her. He’d been too young to do it gentle. He’d… he’d hurt her. She’d been frightened and confused and in pain, begging him to stop. To please just stop.  _ Only hurt for a moment. _

  “Make it stop,” he whispered. “Just end it. Make it stop. Make  _ me _ stop.”

  “No,” Buffy said quietly. “Whatever’s going on, a stake isn’t the way to solve it.”

  She shifted to hold him against herself more comfortably, her fingers burying themselves in his hair as she gently massaged his scalp. It was warm and comforting, and he sure as bloody hell didn’t deserve it. Not after all that he’d done. To his mum, to Dawn… to Buffy.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. God, the things he’d done. Prancing about like a right lunatic, hanging up stolen corpses and spewing forth poisoned daggers aimed straight for her heart. He’d even dragged Joyce and the little bit into it. He shuddered, thinking of the vile things he’d accused himself of, all to get the Slayer to slay him. That’s all he’d been thinking of her as, the Slayer, who would dust him and take away his pain. Not as Buffy, a young woman he was in love with, who’d lost so much and been hurt and abandoned so many times. He was just as much of a selfish wanker as all the rest, wasn’t he?

  “You wouldn’t let me die,” she said, still petting him like he was something worth caring about. “I’m not going to let you go up in a puff of dust. We’ll get through this, okay?” She kissed his temple and whispered, her warm lips against his cold flesh. “We’ll get through this.”

  Spike laughed hopelessly at that. Get through this, was it? If she knew what he’d done….  _ He _ didn’t even want to know what he’d done. Killed thousands, he had, and never thought twice about it, but this…. “Then find Dru. Please, find her for me. She can lock this all away again,” he begged, knowing even as he asked that it was impossible. Dru was well and truly gone. And she’d said it herself. Even she couldn’t help him now. “Please,” he whispered. “Just please find her. Lock it all away.”

  “Lock  _ what _ away?” Buffy asked, sounding frustrated. “Is… is it you? Do  _ you _ need to be locked away?”

  He shook his head, almost wishing it was that easy. Chain him up, lock up the monster, keep his loved ones safe.  _ Chains on him, holding him tight as Dawn rubbed herself against him, making his body respond…. His mum pressing into him, touching, making…. _

  “No. No, don’t want to remember. Please don’t make me remember. Can’t you help me forget again?”

  God, he sounded like a little child begging his mummy to come take the owies away. How long had he been at this? Flitting about, lost in the twisted passages of his own mind. Had it been a full day? What pathways had Dru knotted all up to lock away this memory? At least he seemed more aware for the moment. The fight had cleared his head a little and something about Buffy herself – her scent, the strength of her, the fact that he loved her, maybe all of it – seemed to have him back on some kind of even keel, but he didn’t feel in control of himself yet. The sodding tears wouldn’t stop coming, for one.  _ What possible catastrophe came crashing down from heaven and brought this dashing stranger to tears? _

  “You’d forgotten something?” A natural question he should have seen coming, but it cut at him and set him off even more, sobbing into her chest. She pulled him closer, petting, petting, petting. Dru’s bad dog, and the Slayer’s sodding pussy cat. Always somebody’s pet. “Sssh. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you.”

  Florence bloody Nightingale, she was, now he’d lost his hold on the Big Bad, and god, this was pathetic. He hated himself like this. Weak and too emotional. That’d always been his failing, man and vampire both. He  _ felt _ . 

  “Being turned ought to have fixed it,” he babbled. “I ought not to be feelin’ like this, ‘s not proper.” He sobbed out a laugh as he heard his own words. “Never been proper. Speakin’ to others’ servants like they were real people as a man, and bloody well  _ caring _ as a vampire. Not supposed to.”

  “It… it’s just who you are,” Buffy said, sounding like she was admitting some deep, dark secret. Perhaps she was. Either way, the words soaked into him, reaching that part of him that was aware but not fully in control. “I didn’t want…. After Angel, I couldn’t….” He felt her hair move against him as she sighed, shaking her head. “For a long time, I didn’t want to admit it, but it’s true. Your first impulse has always been to just jump into things head first, and damn the consequences. That includes your feelings, too.”

“It’s not bloody right.” He could feel it circling, sharks of emotion waiting to drag him down,rip him to pieces if he let himself think too long. Push away, push away. Become the dolphin and slip away. Slipping, slipping. God, he was slipping again. “I just want it all to stop. Please.  _ Please _ , Slayer, just make it stop.”

  “I’m not going to kill you, Spike,” she said. “Or let you die. If that means I have to sit on you during the day to keep you out of the sun, then I’ll do it.” Sit on him, was it? That brought to mind the image of her naked and sitting on his face while he.... The image flickered to Dawn, then became…. God, he wished vampires could vomit. She grabbed his head as he tried to twist away, staring fiercely into his eyes. “I am dragging you out of this bathtub, Spike, and you’re just going to have to live. Sorry.”

  She didn’t sound sorry, the bloody bitch. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t try to save me. I’ll just fail you. I’ll fail you like I failed Dawn. Like I failed  _ her _ , like… like before.” He was babbling again, pouring it out all over her like she hadn’t anything else to concern herself with. He needed to be staked. Taken out of everyone’s bloody misery.

  “How did you fail Dawn?”

  He looked up then, the daft question cutting through the mess in his head better than the supportive words and constant pets. “Bloody well let her  _ die _ , Halloween, didn’t I?”

  “Spike, that wasn’t your fault.” Her voice was firm, but he didn’t believe it.

“I promised,” he said. “I promised you. To the end of the world, dammit. I  _ promised _ .”

“Shhh.” She lowered her head and whispered into his ear. “It wasn’t your fault. And it wasn’t my fault. I know… I know it feels better to blame yourself. If it was our fault, we could maybe prevent it next time. But that’s not how it works. That grief group I’ve been going to with Tara? It’s helping. Taking the blame doesn’t make it any better, it makes you feel guilt you don’t need.”

Guilt? Was that what this feeling was,  _ guilt _ ?

Buffy’s warm breath continued to hum in his ear. “The only one to blame is the demon that ate her, and you dusted him. It was  _ not _ your fault.”

  “Wasn’t it?” he said bitterly. He pushed himself away from the comfort of her arms and forced himself to his feet, ignoring the protest of his bruised and battered flesh. It was cold without her warmth, so he hugged himself. Cold, dead arms with only the echo of her heat to offer. “Never have happened if I’d been doin’ it right.”

  “Doing  _ what _ right?” Buffy asked as she stood up.

  “My sodding job! Be the Big Bad.” He paced, not looking directly at her. He couldn’t bear to see her face when she realized the truth; that he could have stopped it from happening. He was over a century old, and he hadn’t gotten there by cowering in a dark hole somewhere, feeding on rats. He was older than any human, and the slayer of slayers. That got respect, among other vampires, and the first instinct of the weak fledges was follow the strong one. “Could’ve had the whole sorry lot of ‘em under my control. I know how to do it. You’ve  _ seen _ me do it.” He got annoyed suddenly. “Bloody hell, bitch, you should have known I was faking that helpless routine.”

   “What? That you’re not as fangless as I’ve been letting everyone pretend?” Buffy said. “Yeah. I knew that.”

   Spike stared at her. She knew? “W-why?”

   “I didn’t want to stake you, Spike,” she said. “Any excuse not to.”

   “Why not?”

   Buffy just stared back. “We’re standing in this room, and you have to ask that question?  _ I want to stop Angel, I want to save the world. _ Did you think I ever forgot?”

   “Bloody Scoobies don’t seem to care,” Spike muttered.

   “They don’t really know,” she said. She looked embarrassed. “I thought they wouldn’t believe me.”

   Spike was actually relieved. First off, it was kind of embarrassing, playing the slayer’s lap dog when he could have been off destroying the world. But more… if the Scoobies didn’t know, then their contempt… well. It made more sense. “I should have been controlling the whole city,” he muttered. “I could have.”

  “Okay, let’s say you’d done that. Made yourself the master of Sunnydale’s vampires again. You’d be doing  _ what _ , exactly? Teaching them all not to kill?”

  Well, no. He was having a hard enough time of that with Dawn, even though he’d resired her and all. The ones toeing the line and not killing in the Slayer’s territory would be left alone and the others dusted. Which… was honestly what he was already doing, more or less. Still, though….

  “Could’ve taught them the traditions that actually make bloody  _ sense _ . Kept ‘em in on Halloween night. It’s supposed to be quiet. All the kiddies running about in costumes makes it safe for the demons to roam, visit their families out in the open and all.”

  If he’d done that, Dawn’s little Halloween rebellion would have been  _ safe _ , even if her little friend had still taken her out to see boys. One of the things he and Harris had bonded over during the summer had been teaching the bit what to do when a boy got too handsy. Screech like a banshee right in the pillock’s ear while scratching, biting, and putting her knees and feet to good use.

  “Is that why there’s not supposed to be any  _ grr, argh _ on Halloween?”

  He shot Buffy an incredulous look. He just said he could have kept Dawn’s murderer away, and  _ that _ was what she focused on? “You’ve been slayer how long? Where’ve you been?” He sighed. That... was almost himself. Maybe that was all he’d needed, just some absurd Buffy-speak, to counteract the madness Dru had slipped in along with the memory lock. (He wanted to believe it was hers. He hated to think that the trauma itself had tossed him all the way round the bend. Would have been just bloody weakness, that.)

  “I’d thought it was something sacred. Like St. Vigeous or something.”

  “Maybe for the Aurelians. For most, it’s just we know if there’s carnage, the costumes will go away, and there won’t be a free night next year.” He held his head. “And those kids were too stupid to see it. Or care. Or no one had even told ‘em. God. I should have been playing the Master game.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  Spike tossed his head. “I hate it. It’s all just work, I’d rather stake the nits.” To play their master he would have had to stay hard, turn off all emotion; and really apart from Dru, Spike had always hated other vampires. Even his own minions. Especially his own minions. Not surprising, now that he knew... that he remembered what he’d done.... Besides that, he would have had to fight constantly to keep place, and he had that raw flank. If just one vamp hired a bunch of humans to dust him so he could take over, he’d have been up the creek. It was a risk he hadn’t wanted to play; if he had nothing of value, no other vampire would try to hire humans to take it from him. It had been a calculated choice, but.... “Dawn paid for it. I didn’t think it would cost her.”

  “That doesn’t make it your fault, Spike.” Then she froze. “Is... is that what happened? Dawn? Is she dust?” She swallowed. “Did  _ you _ … dust her?”

  Spike wasn’t sure for a second. He’d beaten her pretty badly. He’d left her there a bloody mass, and not dust, but if he’d crushed her brain or severed her spinal cord she might have dusted if she tried to move. Then he tilted his head and tried to feel. Darla always said she could sense when Angel was close by, and Drusilla always knew where Spike was, though... Dru wasn’t the best person to base a second sense off of. For a moment he was afraid Buffy was right. Then... something. Nothing definite. He could sort of sense Dawn, though, like the feeling there was someone else in the house. No idea where, or what she was doing, but she wasn’t dust.

  “No,” he said. “I beat her, though. We might have to, soon. My sire hold’s broken. She’s feeling her oats.”

  Buffy looked horrified. “Is she killing?”

  “Not yet,” Spike said. “I don’t think yet. But I forgot... there’s more than one sort of evil.” He was losing it again. He should just rip out both his eyes if they wouldn’t stop tearing up. “I can’t do it right, I can’t make them right. They’re always so....” Drusilla’s words burned in him.  _ You’re not demon enough, Spike, _ she said.  _ You’ve gone all soft and human inside, the slayer’s poisoned you. The man in you reaches out. And he’s not reaching for me. _

   He shook his head, trying to shake out Drusilla, and Dawn, and the other. He turned wrong in his pacing, and his knee, which had been injured at some point in the tussle, suddenly gave out on him. Buffy was there before he’d even fallen all the way to the floor, pulling him against her as she offered support.

  “Come on,” she said quietly. “We need to get you somewhere you can rest.”

  He wanted to tell her to just stake him and solve that problem, but he knew it would have been futile. It felt wrong, anyway, with her working so hard to cut through this… madness. She looked towards the door, then back at him, biting her lip as she considered. She’d been going all out on him while he’d barely bothered to defend himself. He wasn’t in any kind of shape to get to safety before the sun came up. Buffy got his arm across her shoulders and snaked her own around his waist before starting them towards the room where he’d had Giles stashed.

  Then she stopped, turning to lead him to the stairs. He didn’t blame her. It was a struggle to get down the steps, and it left him panting in pain, but the specter of Angel haunted that room too heavily for either of them to be comfortable. Of course, that just left… he shook his head but didn’t try to fight Buffy as she headed into Dru’s room.

  “God, no, not here.” Not tucked away with all of Dru’s other abandoned and broken dollies. Especially not with her madness still trying to run rampant through his thoughts.

   “Then where?” Buffy snapped in frustration. “Dammit, you need to rest.”

  He sighed and inclined his head towards a door that led to what had either been a walk-in closet or a toddler’s bedroom at one time. A sad, dark, lonely excuse of a room, it was, but it had been better than just lying in Dru’s bed, forgotten (or worse,  _ not _ forgotten) while she and her sire had at it right there beside him. Or being there alone with Dru’s scent while she was up with Angelus in  _ his _ room.

  Buffy half-carried him towards the door, which didn’t open when she tried it. She muttered anatomically impossible things for a doorknob under her breath, then turned it harder, breaking the lock. The door swung open, and there it was. His own room. It was barren, ascetic, nothing much there but the twin bed and the parallel bars he used to exercise on, to try and train his legs to work right again. And his bureau with the candles on it. Because it was his room, sod it all, and he’d always loved his candles.

  He’d used to light the candles every night for his mother. The servants could have done it, but it was quieter, softer, more intimate to do it himself, rather than call someone in to where they were reading, or sewing, to get in between them. They hadn’t had gas laid on in their house until he went off to Cambridge, because his mother had liked candlelight better than harsh white gas. Every night as a boy, as a young man, candle after candle, setting all the little tapers lit until his mother glowed in a sea of soft, twinkling lights....

  Buffy didn’t know any of that, of course. She just saw the candles in the very dim moonlight filtered through the one narrow frosted window by the ceiling, and sighed with something like relief. She carefully settled Spike on the end of the bed and went for them, digging into her pocket for a book of matches. She lit a few of the candles, filling the dark, dank room with warm light and the smell of burned dust and melting wax.

  Sitting there, quiet and still, he could feel it building again, the horror and despair that had sent him running off from his lair in a panic. He swallowed and dug his fingers into his injured knee, holding back the floodwaters with a flimsy dam made of physical pain. God, he hated this. He needed it to end. Just end.

_ You can’t do that to her, _ a little voice in his mind piped up even as the rest of him howled that she’d be better off without him. Oddly, it was the demon urging him to the coward’s way out. It was the remains of William bloody Pratt telling him to gut himself and stuff burning coals in the cavity if it meant making Buffy happy.

  He took a deep breath and just watched her for a moment. She was always so beautiful in the candlelight, Buffy was. He’d enjoyed that, when she’d used to come by the crypt for quiet, or liquor, or someone to talk to. She glowed, a piece of the sun caught up in the darkness, drawing in the moths just as much as the flames did. Flames… flames. Fire had been beyond him, before. Now, though… could just sneak in behind her and grab a candle. Light himself up and fall into ash.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and just tried to breathe, focus on the comfort of air filling and leaving his lungs. He’d always been like this, he realized. Throwing himself into things all willy nilly. Searching out wild brawls, angry mobs, hunting down slayers. Had he always had as much of a death wish as Buffy?

  No. That wasn’t it, precisely. He hadn’t wanted to die. He’d wanted someone to kill the demon. He wasn’t entirely sure what the difference was, but…. He opened his eyes. God, the slayer was the beautiful in this sea of ugly, wasn’t she?

  She finished with the candles and came towards him, nearly tripping over the red wheelchair in the middle of the floor. Last he’d seen it was when he’d abandoned it during that whole Acathla business. Angel must have tucked it away in Spike’s old room when he’d tidied the place up. Spike himself would have destroyed the sodding thing, but then, he was a demon, not some souled up champion of puppies and Christmas.

There was that errant thought again, tickling at the back of his mind, Angel and his bloody  _ soul _ . No. No, not now.

_ Yes, now _ , whispered that voice in the back of his head. The one that sounded like Buffy. He threw it away again.

  Buffy frowned at the wheelchair. “I forgot you were still hurt when you came here.” She glanced out towards Drusilla’s room with confusion. “Why were you two down here? Dru would have had to carry you up and down the stairs, and the other bedroom was on the ground floor, wouldn’t it….” She stopped as the realization hit her. That had actually been the  _ point _ of the bedroom arrangements. “Angel picked the rooms?”

  Spike shrugged uncomfortably. “Just been me and Dru for so long. Had to be taught my place again, didn’t I?”

“You’d think he was evil enough without adding passive-aggressive into the mix.”

 “Was hardly the half of it, love,” Spike said.

  He regretted the words the instant they came out of his mouth. A stricken look flashed across Buffy’s face at the thought of her ex-honey being evil, and her pain stabbed at him, cut him to the core, just like it always had, once he’d fallen for her. He dug his fingers harder into his knee, then harder still, until he felt like something was about to pop. Then Buffy was beside him on the bed, her fingers closing on his arm, digging into the gouge the glass had cut there, when he’d been playing creep-meister for Xander.

  He yipped, more out of surprise than pain, and pulled away.

  “It helps, sometimes,” she said quietly. “The pain. I get that. But if you damage a joint like that, it might not heal right.”

  She was right, of course. He knew a few vamps who had taken their healing for granted and had ended up crippled for the rest of their short unlives because they’d let things knit together wrong. He clenched his eyes shut instead, while  Buffy took the dusty pillow cases off the pillows and shifted Spike over to turn back the bed clothes. It smelled musty, but clean. Spike himself was far from it. “Where have you been?” Buffy said, looking him over. “Sewers?”

  He looked down at his feet, dirty from the street-runoff, and his arms, bloody from injuries and scratches, and... yeah, he probably had some of the corpses upstairs on him, too. “All over,” he muttered.

  “Hang on,” she said, and left the room.

  Spike gazed at the candles, debating, yet again, dusting himself while she was gone, but before he’d decided on whether he should (traumatizing Buffy yet again, leaving her alone... god, that would have been a bloody petty act, now he thought on it... but he’d forgotten about Buffy for the most part while he was... out of it) she’d come back again. She had Drusilla’s face bowl from her room, filled with what smelled like rainwater. Probably from the fountain in the jasmine garden, which was turned off, but still held a puddle. She knelt down and started to clean him, using the natural sponge from Dru’s toilette table.

  It felt very much like another moment, only a few weeks ago, when he’d cleaned the diluted blood from her hair. She cleaned the human and demonic blood from his hands, his chest, cleaned the foul scent of death from his arms where he’d carried the corpses, his desperate message to her that he deserved nothing more than dust from her hands. Over and over she wet the sponge, mopped him down, rinsed it, did it again. It felt wonderful, being tended like this, cool and soothing and gentle. That was the thing about the slayer, the hard and the soft, her kindness  _ and _ her strength…. He wondered, was it possible she washed some of the madness away, even?

   The water in the basin began to turn dark. When she seemed to feel he was clean enough, she lay him down on the cool and musty abandoned sheets, and then – god, any other time, this would have been a miracle. Now it was just something she did – unzipped his filthy trousers and pulled them off, not even glancing at his body, which wasn’t excited, anyhow. She made no comment on the fact that his belt was still undone.

  She pulled the sheet over him and then ran her hands up and down his arms, along his torso. Assessing damage? Rubbing life into the dead flesh? She pushed hard even with all his bruises, probably because she knew he liked it hard.

It felt good, and he couldn’t stomach it. “Stop,” he said. He sat up, huddled against the wall, buried his head in his hand. “Don’t. I...” He sighed. He felt immensely tired suddenly. “Don’t make me feel good.”

   “Why not?”

  “Don’t deserve it.”

  “And if I think you do?” She sat back and gazed at him.

  “Then you’re insane,” Spike snapped. Of course she was insane. Why did he always fall for the mad ones? Sodding bitch, Drusilla. She’d done this on purpose, hadn’t she. Sent him off after the slayer with this vile jack-in-the-box in his head, waiting for his own little fledge to turn the handle and let out all the ugly. “God dammit, you brain-addled trull,” he muttered to his absent former, glaring at the door to her room. “You weren’t supposed to leave me like this.”

  “You mean Dru?” Buffy said, and Spike nodded. “What did she do to you?” When he didn’t answer, she tried a different tack. “Spike, what happened with Dawn? You said your sire hold broke. Did she attack you?”

Spike’s eyes closed a moment. “You could put it like that, yeah. ” God, he  _ knew _ how Buffy was devoted to the chit. For a long moment he debated keeping the ugly details from her.

   No. This wasn’t Dawn anymore, not any of her. Damn. He was going to have to tell her. All of it, not just about his errant fledge. She wouldn’t understand why he’d gotten so riled up, why it was so brutal… because she’d find out, and if he didn’t explain now, it’d be all the worse later. He knew she’d hate him, after, and he’d lose her, too, but at least she’d know the  _ why _ .

   The future looked bleak as he envisioned it. No more little bit, no more Buffy, just like there was no more…. Well. There was always the sunlight.

  “Woke up in chains with your little sis naked beside me.” The words dripped out of him like unpolished lead, dull and heavy. “She wanted….” He paused to swallow a sudden lump in his throat, then continued, feeling somehow disconnected from it all. “Told her no. Been telling her all along. No. It couldn’t be like that with us, the love wasn’t that, but she… ugh. She wasn’t listening.”

  “Spike, are you telling me Dawn tried to  _ rape _ you?”

  He flinched. Such an ugly word, that. Short and sharp.

  “She’s evil,” he said. “This is my fault. I wasn’t firm enough with her. And the damn minion instinct, I know it does that. We’re almost made for it, we usually make our own consorts, it’s…” Vile. Demonic. Normal.  “I was too soft with her. Confused the chit.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have got so….”

“And that’s why… you beat her?” Buffy said. She had a very strange look on her face as he nodded. “Before or after she… did she manage to…?” She stopped and covered her eyes with her hands. “Never mind. I don’t actually need to kn-know that.”

He’d made her cry. “It’s not Dawn anymore, pet,” he said. “I was trying to make it so she’d be like her, but….” He swallowed, and told her anyway. “Before. I got away before.”

Buffy made a sound like a blade had been taken out of her, part pain and part relief. “I’m sorry, I know… it wouldn’t be your fault, it just… the idea of it.” She shuddered.

Was she upset over Dawn, or over him? He couldn’t be sure. “I wanted to tell you so you don’t get all… when you see. She’s beat pretty bad, Buffy.”

“Good,” Buffy said, the word as sharp and deadly as a stake.

He couldn’t feel the same way. “I shouldn’t have gone so spare, shouldn’t have bothered me and all. But with this thing Dru left in my head–”

“Shouldn’t have bothered you?” Buffy stared at him in some kind of horror. “Chained and… and violated, and you say it shouldn’t have bothered you?”

“Why should it?”

There was something different between humans and vampires here, he was almost sure of it from the look on her face. 

    “If you’d gone that far when you had me chained up, Spike, I’d have killed you.”

Okay. Now he got it. And yeah, it was the vampire in him. “Not the first time someone’s done that to me, pet.”

“Who could ha–?” She cut herself off and her forehead clenched. “Never mind.” She quietly took hold of his wrist, examined the manacle, and twisted it. It didn’t break, so she muttered an oath, grunted, and pulled harder. It snapped and fell off his wrist. Her face was carefully, painfully, blank. 

“We’re evil,” he said quietly. “It seems normal to us.”

“You didn’t, though,” she said. “With me.”

    He had had the opportunity. A couple times, really. “Not really my cup of tea.” He shook his head. “If it hadn’t been for this… jack-in-the-box, I’d have just dealt with it. Slapped her around a bit, maybe chained her for a few days, or weeks, train it back out of her.” He wished he had. He’d lost her, now. “Yeah. I could have done that.” He shook his head. “But Dru locked something in my head, and the niblet…. Her. The fledge. She unlocked it.”

    “ _ Drusilla _ .” Buffy muttered. “What’d that psycho ho do to you? Some quiet seed of crazy tucked in your head ready to sprout just when things are going well?”

    “Things are going well?” Spike asked, startled.

    “Well, I  _ had _ thought so, until this!” Buffy snapped. “I know, should have known better. Things can’t go well in Buffy’s love life! It’s against fate or something.”

    Spike knew he should be saying something logical. He knew he should be getting on with the heartfelt confessions. But there had been that little word, and his brain had gotten caught up on it. “Love life?”

    Buffy stared at him for a long moment, hovering, and he could see the indecision in her eyes. If she went one direction she would look sad, back off, get distracted, probably go pour out the dirty water or relight a candle, something to do with her hands. If she went the other….

    To his awe, she went the other. She pounced, climbed up the bed, straddled him, pushed him against the wall as she kissed him, hard, her strength gripping him as he moaned beneath her. Then, just as suddenly she pulled back. “God, I’m sorry. Should have asked fi–”

   Spike sat up fully and slammed Buffy back against him, pulling her into another kiss, even more passionate than the last one. She moaned against his mouth, and sensation  _ flared _ as he drank in the taste of her. “Oh, thank god,” she whispered when he let her breathe (she’s human, she needs to breathe sometimes.) “This whole night has  _ sucked _ . I was scared you’d really… ugh!” She pulled him into a tight hug and just held him for a long moment. Oh, yeah. Okay. Buffy. Yes. This.

   “What was it Dru locked up?” she asked in his ear.

   Because she had to ask, didn’t she. Couldn’t just fall into sex and let him forget again. And he had to tell her, because… because he had to.

   “My mum,” he confessed. “I killed my own mum.”

 

 


	34. One

 

 

The story had to be told several times. The first briefly, and haltingly, stark with pain, and it took many prompts. Then as Buffy asked questions he added details; his mother, dying of consumption; Drusilla, unwilling to help him; the thing his mom had tried to do to him; the things she’d accused him of; her wooden cane. And then, and only then, did he finally get to the aftermath.

“I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t even know about wood or that vampires turned to dust. I was so young, and she… scared the hell out of me.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t… it just wasn’t  _ her _ . I just… I stabbed at her with it, just to get her… to get her  _ off _ of me. And then she was gone, just… poof.”

Buffy could imagine the horror of that. She’d been pretty horrified herself the first time a vampire had dusted under her stake, and that had been a monster she’d only wanted gone. This had been  _ his mother. _ The shock and the horror must have been… well, horrific.

“Everything turned inside out, it was like I was dust myself. I’d been promised immortality. I’d promised  _ her _ immortality.” He frowned and shook his head. “I was like Dawn,” he said. “Immortality was a joke, and I was terrified.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Dru heard me screaming, she came down from where we’d been shagging. I don’t know what I was like, I think was maybe trying to put her dust back together, or… I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking clear. Just my hands in the dust, and the sounds coming from me. I babbled something at her… I don’t remember. Where did she go, I had to find her… or… I don’t know. I was panicking. And Dru… she just said she’d make it better. She looked in my eyes, and it was all gone. I… could barely remember that was my house. We went out, I never came back…. I’d forgotten.”

“And what Dawn did….”

“Unlocked whatever box Dru stuck that into, yeah,” Spike said. He sat with his hands over his eyes. “I don’t know,” he went on. “There was no humanity in that woman.” Then he paused. “Maybe at the end,” he said. “Just before she dissolved, her face… almost gratitude….” He was tearing up again, but his voice was soft, very calm. He sounded in shock again, really. “I was a newborn. I _ couldn’t _ have made her right. You need strength to think beyond bloodlust, minion instinct… the evil. I was too young to turn anyone worthy. And Dru was too mad to tell me that.” He leaned his head back against the wall, and he looked very tired.

    It was a terrible thing, to see grief in a vampire. She wondered if this was what he’d looked like after she had died. She didn’t have anyone to ask… except maybe Dawn. If Dawn was even capable of answering. Buffy wondered what, if anything, she could say that could make him feel better about the whole thing.

    Finally, she landed on the truth.

    “I’d have done the same thing,” she said.

    “No, you wouldn’t.”

    “If I was newly turned… if I didn’t know the rules… if there was any part of  _ Buffy _ left in the demon this body became?” Buffy confessed. “I’d have tried to save my mother, too.”

    “You’re smarter than that.”

    “I  _ know _ better than that,” Buffy said. “But I’m not smarter. I know… because I thought about it.”

    Spike cocked his head at her. “Buffy…?”

    “When Mom was really sick… when she was spouting nonsense up at the ceiling, and we didn’t know if the tumor was even operable, let alone if they could get it out… I thought about it. Just… for a second, you know? Trying to drown out her voice, crying into the sink… I thought about it. She’s dying, if I call Angel, have him turn her….” She stopped, closed her eyes. “I knew better, but… I thought it.”

    “I knew better, too,” Spike said. “Or I’d have offered.”

    Then he cringed, and squeezed his eyes shut again, and Buffy reached out and touched his hand. “I’m so sorry, Spike.”

    “Why?” he asked. “She’s been dead a century, and I’m sure you’re glad she’s dust.”

    “The vampire who you yourself say was nothing more than the evil? Yeah,” Buffy said. “But your mother?” She shook her head.

    “So? I’ve killed hundreds, probably thousands, and I don’t give a wet slap about any of them.”

    “But this one hurts. And I’m sorry.”

    “So am I.” Tears pierced his closed lids, slid down his cheekbones, and he scrubbed them angrily away. He growled, full demon, annoyed, or angry. “God, why do I do this? You, Dawn, now Mother,  I keep bloody  _ caring _ . It’s like I’m cursed.” He sniffed again. “Feels like it happened yesterday. It’s been all locked away, it’s all nice and  _ fresh _ .” He swallowed. “I can’t deal with this.” He looked at her with an earnestness which frightened her. Then he said something that shocked Buffy to the core. “If I went and got myself a soul, would all this start to make sense?”

    The words stood between them like a naked child saluting priests. Buffy stared in numb shock. Finally, after long moments, she said the only thing possible under the circumstances. “What?”

    Spike sniffed and rubbed his nose. “Just a thought I had. Forget it.”

Buffy couldn’t forget it. She  _ wouldn’t _ forget it. “Spike, why would you say that?”

Spike didn’t answer. Didn’t he realize what he was saying, what it meant, the difference even the  _ words _ could make?

“Is… that… something you want?”

He shrugged. “Thought about it.” He sounded far more casual than she thought he had any right to be.

“Since when?”

“Since you fell…” he stopped, and swallowed, and didn’t say it. She could see her battered body in his eyes, in the shudder in his head as it turned it away from the memory. “Well, even before that, really.”

“Why?”

He shrugged again. “Different reasons.”

_     “What?” _

    He finally seemed to realize she wasn’t dismissing this. And suddenly he got shy, and awkward. “Well, at-at first? I thought, the whole thing about Angel, he had that precious soul. Well, hell, if that’s the only thing you count as makin’ a bloke real enough to love you. Light enough burden, given the weight loving you was.”

    It wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear, and she almost groaned with disappointment. “Spike, that’s....”

    “Bollocks, I know,” he said, dismissing it as easily as she did. “Can’t go getting you some shiny trophy and ‘spect that to win you, like you were the same. Threw the idea out. But then you were gone.” He stopped, swallowed, made himself go on. “You were gone, and I... I missed you. Tore my heart out, it did, missing you, every second. And the idea I had nothing to follow you with? That hurt. I mean, I could kill bloody Xander, and he could trot after you, but me? My soul’s already flitted on.” He shook his head. “Seems silly, now, ‘cause what good would my soul do? Since you went flights-of-angels up to heaven... no way my poor slip of a soul would be good enough to follow on, even if I had one.”

    Buffy had thought of what Spike would be like with a soul before, but had always dismissed it before she’d gone even half-way as in depth as Spike had already gone with this one brief statement. “Spike... I....”

   “I know,” he said. “It’s daft. But the thought, it keeps popping in there, like... I’m not meant to grieve. Not meant to care if some poor human dies, but I do. You, your mum even. The niblet. I care. And I’m not ‘sposed to, and it twists me up. It makes me feel sick, and it makes me hate… everything I am and everything I’ve been, human, demon, doesn’t seem to matter, I don’t  _ fit _ .” He cocked his head and gazed at her. “Did you know, I feel you? Vampires don’t feel for other people. I feel for you.” He made a hopeless noise. “Sometimes I feel you better than I feel me.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked at a loss to describe it for a minute. “Well… you’ll look at me sometimes. Anytime you’re happy? I just light up, ray of sunlight right through the whole of me.” He didn’t seem to realize he’d just made an analogy that would have burned him to ashes. Or… no. Maybe he did. “And when you’re hurting? Like you’ve been? Every time it’s like I’ve been ripped open from the inside out. That’s  _ your _ pain, I shouldn’t care. But I do. That was why I held out for Glory, I knew your pain if you lost Dawn would be so much worse than anything she could do to me. I knew I couldn’t bear it, it would break me. Glory could only kill me. But you…? Hurting?” He shook his head. “Joyce was bad enough.” He winced, and she knew he was thinking about his own mother again.

    “You know, the night you came back,” Spike went on. “Xander looked at me, and said ‘Aren’t you happy she’s alive,’ and I... god. The wanker was blind. Couldn’t he see your eyes? The shock, the pain, didn’t he feel it? How could I be happy, feeling all that as you shot it all at me in silence? I knew something was wrong.”

    He shook his head. “And it’s like this  _ all the time _ . Sometimes I think it’s just you,” he said with undisguised resentment. “Crying out in the dark, what has she done to me? Wormed into my heart. Make me weak.” Then he softened. “Sometimes I think it’s the chip. Metal and wires and silicone, all twisted up in my head, telling me  _ You can’t be a monster _ . But I can’t be a man.” He shook his head. “But this. This was before you, before Dawn, before the chip. This… this was the day after I was bloody  _ turned _ , does that mean I’ve always been this? I’m just… a mess. If I got a soul, would it sort itself out?”

    Buffy wasn’t sure. It didn’t really seem likely. In fact, she was pretty sure it would just make things worse. “How... how would you even... do that?”

   Spike shrugged. “I could cozy up to a curse, like your old honey. But I was thinking demon.”

   God, he really  _ had _ been thinking about it. “Demon?”

   He nodded. “There’s demons who’ll drag such things out of the nether realms, if you pass some trials or some bollocks. I think there’s one in east Africa. Or maybe a powerful enough warlock or something... I don’t know. Whenever I get to the planning stage it all seems dumb and pointless.”

   He’d  _ gotten _ to the planning stage before? How long had he been thinking this? (And Buffy couldn’t help thinking of Angelus, snapping Jenny Calendar’s neck to avoid getting his soul back….)

   “What good would it do me anyway?” Spike asked. He rubbed his forehead. “Course that was before this. If I thought it could stop me from feeling this confused... in a heartbeat.” Then he laughed. “Don’t have a heartbeat. Bugger.”

“I don’t know if a soul would do that,” Buffy said. The idea had been weighing on her, too, in a different way. “I know what a soul  _ is _ . It’s whatever I was when I wasn’t… here. But what a soul _ does _ ?” She turned around and leaned against the wall next to Spike. They sat together, almost casually, staring at Spike’s candles. His hand, resting on his knee, looked so inviting to Buffy. She wanted to reach out for it, take it, lace herself through it. He had such expressive, long-fingered hands….

“Doesn’t it make everything clear and good, then?”

“Did you ever think it did that?”

He shrugged. “I was never sure what it did, either,” he said. “Sure does something.”

“Something,” Buffy said. “I used to think it could make a vampire into a person, who could be good. Like Angel was good. But Angel wasn’t good.”

Spike gazed at her, and she knew she had just done a total one-eighty on everything she’d ever said before about Angel. “I know,” she said quietly. “Things… have gotten more clear, lately. Sitting in these circles, listening to people tell their stories about their abusive exes and their mental problems…. It’s pretty obvious. Angel wasn’t good. He wasn’t evil. But he wasn’t good, either. He did things that hurt me, things that were wrong, even when he had a soul. I didn’t recognize it, because he kept saying he was good. And I loved him, so I wanted him to be good. So I believed him.”

“Angel lies a lot,” Spike pointed out.

“I know he does,” Buffy said. They both sat silent in that truth for a moment. “I knew it then, too,” she confessed. “I loved him, but I couldn’t trust him. He’d go behind my back, and manipulate me through my friends, and make decisions without asking me, and… well, sixteen year old girl. If I’d thought you were doing to Dawn the shit Angel was doing to me, I’d have killed you in a heartbeat.”

“Yeah, I know,” Spike said ruefully, and Buffy chuckled.

“I knew you weren’t,” she said softly.

“Evil,” he reminded her. “I could have been.”

Buffy shook her head. “I knew you weren’t.” She slid her hand onto his, gently. “And I  _ know _ you could have been.” She fondled his fingers thoughtfully. “I don’t know what a soul would do for you. I mean, it changed Angel completely, but…” She looked at Spike. “Is that really what you want? To… not be you anymore?” Of course it was, she realized. He’d just tried to have her dust him.

Spike shrugged. “I don’t think Angel and Angelus are really all that different. He just seems to want to be good when he’s on the soul.”

Buffy gazed back. “Do you want to be good? I mean… really.”

He looked tormented. After a long moment he said, “I don’t know. I don’t want to be  _ this _ .”

    “What is  _ this? _ ”

    “This! Me!  Neither good nor bad, neither light nor dark, stuck in the shadows. I’m caught in between. Can’t be bad ‘cause you wouldn’t like it, and if I hurt the wrong person, it’s like cutting out my own heart. And then can’t be good, ‘cause I don’t really know how.  Completely at sea, and I can’t… find land or… navigate….”

   “Alone and adrift?” Buffy asked quietly. “And you feel like any minute, the waves will crash down on you and drag you under?”

He turned to look at her, his eyes dark in the candlelight. “Yeah.”

    Buffy looked down. “Just before I was chosen, when I was about Dawn’s age, I did a paper for school. On sea otters. Did you know they hold hands when they sleep?” She twisted her hand on his so that her fingers laced with his long, expressive ones, their hands locked together. “So they don’t lose each other.”

Spike caressed her thumb with his. “What are you saying?”

“I don’t know,” Buffy said. “Just… maybe instead of turning to death, or… or dust, we should try to… hang on. Maybe we’ll still be adrift, but… if we hold on to each other… the sea won’t look so big and empty.” She looked up at him. “I’ve been lost, too,” she said. “You know I have been.”

His voice was very quiet, but very stark. “You don’t think a soul would help.”

“I think you trying to get one would kill you,” she whispered. “And I don’t want you to die.” She swallowed, and threw all caution to the wind. She was afraid of what he’d do, afraid he’d grab her, or get cocky, or do something to make her regret it, but the words were burning on her tongue. The difference between how he described his feelings for his mother, compared to how Angel described his sister… it was night and day. If she could ever, ever, have brought herself to love Angel – and she had, deeply – then the truth of the matter was obvious. “I think I just fell in love with you a little bit.”

He didn’t move, but he started to tremble.

She closed her eyes. “I’m not very good at that, so… don’t expect too much,” she added.

“You’re wrong,” Spike said. “You’re incredibly good at it. You love everyone and everything with a devotion I can’t even contemplate.”

“Riley didn’t think so.”

    “Riley was an ass.”

    She shook her head. “Then why does it seem so hard?”

“Maybe ‘cause singling out one special person in the middle of all that love seems impossible. All that brightness washes out to white noise. Now me…” He gave a sad little smile. “It’s just a big dark plain of indifference. With a few very bright points in it. You’re a fire in the night, Buffy. And I’m drawn to it.”

“Well, I think I need some shadow,” she said quietly. “Because my eyes hurt.”

Spike finally moved then, and she didn’t blame him. She wanted a hug, too. He wrapped his arms around her, and she entwined herself in him, and they were together in the shadows. “I don’t know if I can do this,” Spike whispered in her ear.

Buffy pulled away to look at him. “Do what?”

“Be what you need. Be… enough.” He looked up. “Before I remembered this, I’d have said I could, but now? Even when I’m doing what I think is right… I killed someone I loved more than anything. I want to be good for you, Buffy, but even when I do good… I was made evil. What if I muck it up?”

“I won’t let you.”

“It’s how we’re  _ made _ , Buffy. We’re evil, it’s in the blood.” He looked down, and Buffy knew he was thinking of Dawn, kept from the killing but still doing evil.

Buffy wanted to be virtuous and dismiss the thought in her head. She knew it was sick, she knew it was probably wrong, she knew it was dangerous as hell. And she also knew she’d wanted it from the moment she’d been Chosen. Three times it had happened to her: the Master, Dracula, and Angel. And every single time the memory had been twisted or tainted. Drowned, enthralled, knocked clean out by what the doctors had called hypovolemic shock. She didn’t clearly remember any of it, and she knew it could be something… impressive enough that Riley, at least, had kept coming back for more. What Spike had done in the cemetery, it was just a tingle, it had felt on the edge of something she hadn’t quite reached… and Buffy realized she’d determined even then that she was going to ask him for this one day. God, she was sick.

    And then Buffy remembered the look on Katie’s face in group therapy, as she proudly and humorously suggested sending Buffy to kink-sites. Maybe she wasn’t so sick, after all. Not if she was safe about it. Did she trust Spike to be…?

    God, she knew she did.

“Then you need new blood,” Buffy said.

She slid herself onto Spike’s lap, wrapping her legs around his waist, pulling herself against him, and then, without fanfare, pulled her shirt over her head. She perched before him, unadorned, her skin darker than his in the candlelight, both of them soft within it. She tilted her head, like Spike always did. “Drink.”

She could feel Spike tense under her. “Buffy…”

“Just a taste,” she said. “Just… just this once. I’ll fill you up with my blood, and you won’t have room for the evil anymore. I’m resiring you, Spike. You’ll be mine, then.”

They both knew that wasn’t really how that worked. But it didn’t seem to matter. Spike’s eyes were dilated, his lips parted, his breath baited. “Why?”

“To prove you’re changing,” Buffy said. “You could kill me. Prove to us both you won’t.”

Spike hesitated. He hesitated a long, long time. Finally Buffy took hold of his chin and looked into his eyes. “Let me see your true face.”

“This is.”

She didn’t doubt it. Spike always went back to human when he was resting. “Then show me your other face.”

“Buffy…”

“Trust me.”

Spike closed his eyes, and when he opened them, they were yellow. Buffy touched the furrowed brow, the hardened cheekbones, the wrinkled nose. She’d done this for Angel, she remembered. Explored and examined his demonic face. He’d looked just as awed and bewildered as Spike did, now. Why did she find it beautiful, sometimes? Gently, she traced his lips with her thumb, and they parted slightly, revealing the sharp teeth. It wasn’t just two little fangs, it was a whole mouthful of danger, peering like demons themselves out from between his lips. She slid two fingers gently into his mouth, and his breath caught. He couldn’t seem to help himself. He closed his teeth, caught her fingers between his fangs, wouldn’t let them go.

His cool tongue against her fingertips, she stared into his yellow eyes. “I trust you, Spike,” she whispered. “You’ve stood for me, and beside me, and behind me. You’ve stood up for me,” she said, the wheelchair behind them an eloquent testament to this. She pulled her fingers away, leaving him slack jawed with wonder. “You want a soul? Take mine. Take it in with the blood, make me a part of you.” 

    Spike made a low noise. “I don’t….” Don’t dare, don’t know, don’t want to…  _ muck it up _ , he’d said. 

    “You always know what I feel, you say?” Buffy asked. “Use that. Use that, and you’ll know, you’ll  _ know _ you won’t muck it up. Because I’ll be part of you. And I won’t let you.” She pulled him close and held his mouth to her throat, just where Angel had bitten her before. “Let me be your light to see by.” She squeezed him very tightly. “And you be the dark I can finally rest in.”

For a long moment, Spike did nothing. Then he began to kiss her, deeply, heavily, slathering her throat with his tongue, licking at the same spot over and over, and Buffy couldn’t think why he would only kiss instead of bite, even though his kisses felt fantastic. Then she felt it, his fangs, just delicately touching her throat, poised there for long moments, silently asking her;  _ Did you mean this _ ?

“Do it,” she whispered.

From what she did remember of Angel’s bite, this was where the pain started to come in. The pain and the strength and the holding her tightly, making her  _ his _ …. And the pain did come. For the briefest of seconds. Then the pain faded to a cool, blissful numbness, and Buffy gasped. It… it didn’t have to hurt?

Spike had bitten a little further back than Angel had, and he held her so gently. He wasn’t biting anymore, just kissing at her throat, and Buffy knew if she pulled away, he wouldn’t hold her. It was so, so gentle…

She didn’t want it gentle.

She didn’t have to be gentle with him. She grabbed Spike hard, digging her nails into the soft cool flesh of his back, and he hissed, but he wouldn’t take her harder. He sucked and lapped, using his tongue as much as anything else, and something started to sing within Buffy. It coursed through her, running all the way down to her groin. It made her moan, little grunts of pure pleasure, and cling to Spike like she was about to fly away. It felt like she was. As if someone might try to take her away from him, and that would be the worst thing in the world. There was nothing better than to sit here in his arms, his mouth against her throat, drinking, drinking, drinking her down….

She realized in some corner of her mind that Spike had been at this a while. Far longer than Angel or the Master had drunk from her. Was he killing her? Apart from this feeling of  _ This is awesome! _ Buffy didn’t feel weak, or blood deprived. Clearly Spike didn’t either, from the huge hard-on he was sporting beneath the sheets, digging into her crotch through her jeans. Damn, she should have taken those off. Why was this taking so long, and how long  _ could _ it last, because she didn’t really want it to end. Should she stop him? She didn’t want to. She just wanted to… to die in his arms….

Finally he shifted, lying her down on the old musty sheets, and Buffy hoped he’d keep drinking, but no such luck. He pulled his head away from her and gazed down at her with blue eyes, filled with such love and such awe, he looked almost in tears again.

Buffy smiled at him, languid. “I lo–”

“Shh,” Spike said, putting a finger over her mouth. “Don’t say it tonight.” He kissed her throat again, gently.

“Make love to me.”

Spike looked down. “Only ‘cause we have before.”

Buffy was confused. “Why are you hesitating?”

Spike smiled. “It’s worked,” he said, half teasing, half deadly serious. “Filled me all up, slayer. I’m a slayer’s get now. I’m all good inside. Promise.” He pulled away – god, pulling away. That was just  _ wrong _ ! – and pulled her jeans down. Then he arched over her with such mischief and seductive art to his every unneeded breath. “And you can’t think straight on that bite. So no decisions,” he told her. “No declarations. Just close.”

A moment later he was between her legs again, licking and fondling, so damn gentle and determined and clever and excited – she’d never had it like this,  _ never _ – as he lapped and licked at her, and she wanted more, but she seemed so far away from him down there. “Up here,” she begged. “Let me see your eyes.”

Spike wouldn’t let her up until she came against his tongue, crying out at the ceiling, clutching at his head with her fists. Then he crept over her, sliding above her, teasing at her pulsing wet pussy with his smoothness. “You want me in you? Like you’re in me?”

Buffy could only nod, opening herself wider, trying to pull him in. His soft grin grew wider, and he slid himself into her. “We’re one,” she whispered as he moved within her. Or she thought it was her. It might have been him. One of them was whispering, and really, it didn’t matter who. They were part of each other, that was all that mattered. “One blood. One soul. One.”

“One.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line "Like a naked child saluting priests" was stolen shamelessly from James Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks.


	35. Trusted

 

 

   Everything was warm and soft, and Spike didn’t want to wake up. He could feel Buffy in his arms, feel her blood inside of him; he held her scent on his tongue like cinnamon and honey. Despite all that, part of him was terrified to open his eyes. Like she’d vanish into naught but mist and moonbeams if he dared to look upon her. 

   He was dreaming again. Had to be. He had dreams like this all the time, forced them sometimes when the pain got too harsh, when he couldn’t shake his need for her, when he couldn’t stop grieving for her. He’d close his eyes, and just put her there, in his arms, warm and safe and strong beside him. If he focused too hard, the dream would end – the dream always ended – and he’d be alone again. His arms tightened convulsively at the thought, and she made a small sound.

   That was real.

   His eyes snapped open, and he gazed down at  _ her _ . Buffy. Real and alive and  _ there _ with him. The memory of last night lost the murky surreality of sleep, and… god. She was here. She was still asleep, all cuddled against him. She looked so peaceful, all her cares and pain tucked away for the moment. He reached out and gently, oh so gently, stroked her cheek. Soft. Soft and vulnerable.

   He swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut. God, what she’d let him do…. What she’d offered him. Not just her blood, but… hadn’t she offered her soul? He opened his eyes again and just drank in the sight of her. Even if she took it back (and he could hardly believe she wouldn’t) for this night, for this moment… it was everything. It felt  _ real _ almost, as if he  _ did  _ have a soul, as if that empty space inside had been filled, filled up with  _ her _ , and he was complete for the first time in… ever. He wasn’t worthy of her. He never could be, but he was bloody well going to try. Before, he’d tried to be good to make her see him. To maybe get her to love him back. Now, though… now he would do it for himself. To make himself worthy of the gift she had given him.

   She made another sound. Then her lashes fluttered and her eyelids twitched. Sleepy hazel eyes gazed at him as her mouth curved into a sweet little smile that was both happy and oddly shy. “You’re here,” she murmured.

   “Course I am,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

   She shrugged, looking sleepy and vulnerable. “Bit of a complex about lovers running off while I’m sleeping.” 

   Okay, made sense. Angelus, Riley. “Promise. I’ll never do that, love. If I ever have to go out, I’ll wake you.” He took her hand in his and kissed her fingertips. “Just a touch, headed out, be back soon.” He laced their fingers together. “Never gonna leave you, slayer,” he said. “Otters adrift together, remember?” He tugged her hand closer and held it against his chest. “You’re part of me now.”

   Her eyes widened suddenly and she gasped. “Do I need a blood transfusion?”

   Spike was confused. “What?”

   She was no longer languid and happy, she was anxious, and seemed about to jump out of the bed. “Am I okay? Did I lose too much? How much did you take, was it–?”

   “Shh,” he said. “No. You’re fine.”

   “You sure?”

   He nodded.

   She relaxed a little. “It was just... I couldn’t tell,” she said. “It was... like, about... about from the middle there I didn’t care, anymore, if you were killing me.”

   “I know,” Spike said. “That’s what it does.”

   “And... you fed lots longer than any of the others did. I mean when Angel did this, I...”

   Was  _ that _ who that bite was from? Of course it was. It made sense. Of course she’d let Angel bite her. He’d watched countless young women as Angelus seduced them into just baring their throats for him – before it became nothing but blood and pain and screaming.

   Spike kissed her. “Buffy, did you think I’d have just lain here beside you if you were in danger like that?”

   Buffy looked up at him, her eyes soft and wondering as a child’s. “It was just that it went on and on. And it felt really....” She swallowed and looked down. “Angel just hurt. And then I got weak.” She looked ashamed.

   “But you wanted it anyway?”

   She looked down. She did. He knew she did. He was pretty sure most slayers did, at some level.

   He gently touched her neck, where he remembered that bite scar to have been. It was right over the vein, piercing probably both the internal and the external jugular. The scar was pretty much gone. 

   “This could have killed you,” he whispered. He gently traced his finger up to where his bite mark was on her neck, his tongue touching behind his teeth. God... he was going to have to be very careful. So was she. She liked the bite enough she could go blood-junkie in a heartbeat, and god, the look of his bite on her skin. He’d never seen anything more beautiful. “This was all muscle tissue.”

   She stared up at him, a strange, almost wondering look in her eyes. “Why would you…?” She shook her head. “You couldn’t have gotten much blood from that.”

   “Wasn’t the point of it all, was it?” He leaned in to gently kiss his bite mark. “Veins are for feeding. Or for the kill. Never going to do the latter, and the former…. Don’t know what the future will bring, so not going to say there wouldn’t be a need for it, but this, between us right here? Not about feeding. It’s just about you and me. About us. About giving and… giving.” They’d both taken as well, but that hadn’t been the point either.

   “Sharing,” Buffy said softly. 

   “Yeah.” 

   They lay there quietly in each other’s arms for a moment, and Spike wished it could last forever. It couldn’t, though. “So what happens now?” he asked. 

Buffy looked a bit discomfited. “Well, I told Xander we were fucking, so cat’s out of the bag, there,” she said. “He’s probably told the others, by now.” 

“What does that mean?”

She paused for a long, long moment, and then said, “It means I have to go home.”

For one wild moment Spike wanted to ask why. Why couldn’t they just pick up and go? Run, leave Dawn, leave the damn Scoobies and the hellmouth and all the grief and terror and ugliness behind and just go off and explore this miracle between them. No destinies, no callings, no responsibilities, just them.

And he already knew what she’d say. There was a hellmouth to guard, and friends to protect, and yes, whatever was going on with Dawn they couldn’t abandon that debacle.  _ Someone _ would come and exert power over the hellmouth, if not him and the slayer than someone worse, a Big Bad who might use that power the way the Master wanted to, or Glory, or some other beastie. She’d say they couldn’t go. So… no real point in making the offer. 

    Damn. Was this what having a soul was like? Felt like having a millstone round his neck. At the same time, connecting what he wanted to do to what he knew she’d feel was right was kind of freeing in a way. He couldn’t muck it up too badly, like he had with Mother… and Dawn.

    “Your little team’s not gonna be right pleased to see me by your side,” he pointed out. “I scared each and every one of them out of their skivvies.” 

    And he’d actually hurt Giles. Bloody sod. He wondered if it was because even in his madness he was mad at the bugger, for threatening to leave her. Which… since he’d been planning on leaving himself… bloody hell, he’d taken that inner rage out on Giles, letting that chip fire through his skull over and over again, and –  _ No. Don’t go back there, Spike m’lad _ . The door of panic and grief that had sparked the madness was still there, kept closed by Buffy. And while he didn’t think the madness would take him again (or he hoped it wouldn’t), the darkness within it was heavy, heavy, heavy, and he didn’t want to think on it again. 

    He focused again on Buffy, the curve of her wrist, the gentle perfume of her scent, the flash of her soft hair…. “I’m gonna have to apologize, aren’t I.”

    Buffy raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, probably a good step.” 

There was really only one thing to say to that. “Bugger.” 

    He sighed and reluctantly got up. His jeans were a mess, but the dresser hadn’t just been there to hold his candles. He had clothes in there, too. Or he was supposed to. The first drawer he opened had an abandoned rats nest in it. The second drawer was sealed enough, though. He pulled out a fresh pair of black jeans, a t-shirt, and hanging on the back of the door was one of his red overshirts, so he shook it out and slipped that on, too.

Buffy smiled at him as he slid his arms in the sleeves. “I love that cranberry. Makes you look so sexy.” 

Wow. She was  _ admitting _ it? Spike dove for her, pulling her back into his embrace, kissing her tenderly. She was warm and soft and still sleepy. “Oh, god, Buffy. I love you.”

“I know,” she whispered in his ear, which was almost as gratifying as if she’d said it back. “I….” She didn’t say it, and he could almost hear the barrier in it, the pain that Angel and Riley had left in the word. He kissed her again, so she didn’t have to say it, leaving it hanging between them. Whatever this was, it was new, and it was precious, and he would have to tread carefully.

“Look,” he said softly. “I know… this isn’t easy, and it’s… I’m probably gonna screw up, but I meant it. What we did, tonight – last night,” he amended, since it was nearly morning. He touched the bite mark on her throat. “It’s binding.”

Buffy looked nervous, and he tried to explain. “Not, not  _ literally _ binding. But… What you offered me… I want it. If you meant it… I want you as my soul, Buffy. I know, the fight, and the blood, and the… the things I said, what happened to me, they can make stuff feel hot, and-and close. But if you meant it…. You know when I make a vow, I keep it.”

She nodded.

     “Not gonna lie, it won’t be easy, but I….” He shoved a hand through his hair, sure he was bollocksing it all up but needing to say it. “I’m gonna make you proud, Slayer. I promise.”

“I’m willing to try and trust you,” she said. She looked down. “You scared me, when you said you were in love with me. Not when you tried to kill me, not when you betrayed us all, not when you were just being evil. It wasn’t until you loved me that I got scared.”

Spike had realized that, but he hadn’t realized Buffy had. His head cocked. “Why is that?”

“Because I wanted you,” she said. “And that scared me.” She looked up. “I meant it too.” And then with an uncharacteristic vulnerability she asked, “Please, don’t make me regret it.”

Spike wanted to kiss her again, press her down, make love to her, but time was of the essence if they didn’t want to leave via the sewers, and… well. There was one other issue.   

“We’ll have to do something with… ah, with the bodies.” God, he couldn’t believe he’d done all of that. What the bloody hell had he been thinking?

Buffy’s face pinched. “Ugh. I forgot about that.” He could tell she didn’t look forward to dragging six damaged corpses back through the sewers. It was going to be dawn in less than an hour – just enough time to get back to Revello Drive if they left now, but not if they had to deal with his little foray into interior decorating. “Would you be okay if we just called the cops in? Let them deal with it?” 

Spike reached out and touched her hand. “Angel’s place,” he pointed out. “You might not want….”

“I don’t care,” she said wearily. “Vampires don’t leave fingerprints, do they?” 

   “Dead. No oils. Though we’ll leave them in substances.”

   “But not just from touching things? They won’t see your fingerprints on the bodies or anything?” He shook his head. “I think we’re okay, then, so long as I’m in the clear. I think all I touched was you and a couple things in here. Oh, and my stake,” she said. “I’ll have to grab that.” She took up her shirt and wiped her fingerprints off the face bowl before sliding the wrinkled fabric over her head. God, even putting her clothes on, she was… stop. This was going to be a problem, she was even more distracting now that he’d  _ had _ her. 

   Spike wiped off the broken manacle as Buffy went to wipe her prints off the doorknob with her sleeve. “So. We’re good on calling in the cops,” she said. “That’ll make this a crime scene. Probably not going to be able to come back here, and by the time we do, everything will be–”

   “Crime scene.” Which meant probably gone.

   “Yeah. Is there anything from here you need?”

   “No.” Spike stopped. “Yeah,” he said. He left Buffy’s side and went back into Drusilla’s room. One of these was... there. He stooped and picked up one of the lace-clad dolls, a dark haired one with a blindfold on. Miss Edith. Dru always had a Miss Edith. (Often had to replace her.) He came back out with the doll under his arm. Buffy said nothing about it. “Ready to leave this place behind now.”

   “Yeah,” Buffy said. “I think I am, too.”

 

***

 

   Spike balked on the porch. “I’m not ready for this.”

   Buffy’s house was ablaze with light. He could tell all three of them were in there. Xander, the young man Spike had terrorized when he’d come to scout; Willow, the witch on the wagon who had likely been tempted to fall off it when Spike had attacked; and of course the fellow countryman he’d gone full-out-assault-level-crazy on top of. Uh, literally, Spike realized.  

   Buffy glared at him in the pale blue of the pre-dawn light. “Of the two of us here, I’m the one with something to lose.” She reached up to open the door, and Spike grabbed that hand and dragged her into a slightly reluctant embrace.

   The kiss was firm, serious, and Buffy allowed it at first with a businesslike air which slowly melted as the fire between them smoldered. “Not true, slayer,” he whispered to her. “I could be about to lose everything.” He dropped one more tiny peck on her warm, sweet lips. “Everything.” He didn’t say  _ My very soul _ but it hung between them.

   Buffy looked up at him, her eyes dark and searching in the teal light – god she was beautiful in the morning. He wished he could just stay out here and watch the dawn creep over her hair – and then she pulled his head down and kissed him in earnest, teeth and tongue and strength forcing itself against him, and he burned (like the sun was going to burn him in, oh about... five minutes, unless he made sure he stayed in shadow), flaring against her until he backed her against the door with a thud.

   And a second later the door opened behind them, nearly dropping them both into the hall. Xander stood there, wide eyed. For a long moment he stared at the two of them in their lip-lock, then he blushed, and walked to the living room. 

   “Buffy’s back!” he called.

   Buffy awkwardly wiggled in Spike’s arms, and he let her go. They followed Xander into the house just as Giles came out of the kitchen, rather pointedly sporting an ice-pack on his head. 

   Before Spike could even open his mouth to start his awkward apology, there was a scramble of footsteps upstairs. Willow pounded down the steps like a herd of elephants and flung herself at Buffy for a hug. Right, didn’t want to get in the way of that. He should… he should…. Spike looked around nervously for something to do. Xander had been working on repairing the plate window and was back at it.

   Spike set down Miss Edith and took up a piece of sandpaper. Without a word he started working on the other end of the frame the boy was shaping. Xander glanced at him, swallowed, and said nothing.

   It was then that Willow looked past Buffy and saw him. “What’s he–? I mean, Buffy, why?”

   Spike put down the sandpaper. “Red.” Giles stood beside Buffy and Willow. “Rupert.” Spike nodded silently at Xander. Yeah. Xander had told them. They all had identical looks of disapproval on their faces.

   Spike’s first impulse was to tell all three of them to sod off and leave him alone so he could shag his bird in peace. Wasn’t as if this was their house, bunch of pious bastards. His jaw clenched as the desire to say this almost clawed its way out. But that wasn’t the right thing to do, bloody hell, god dammit, how the hell was he supposed to do this? “Uh. For the record. I... I should explain that I wasn’t all right upstairs when... any of the three of you last saw me. My former had left a bit of a jack-in-the-box tangled up in my head, and... left me pretty much bug-shagging crazy. And I went to take it out on the slayer and her mates.”

   “And Dawnie,” Willow said.

   Spike cringed. He’d been trying very hard not to think about Dawn.

   “Willow,” Buffy started.

   “No, Dawnie’s, like, dead or something,” Willow said. “There was just blood and ruin at the crypt, and Dawn’s  _ gone _ . You killed her when you were crazy, didn’t you!” She was all fist-clenched and angry, and Spike shook his head quickly.

   “Dawn’s not dust,” he said. “If she’s not at the crypt, I dunno where she might be, but... I didn’t kill her.”

   “Willow, we’ll... talk about Dawn later,” Buffy said quietly.

   “No, now. You can’t believe how much blood there was, Buffy!”

Buffy grabbed Willow’s elbow and turned her. “Willow. Let it go. Dawn’s a vampire, and that’s  _ our _ business. It’s more complicated than it looks.”

“We  _ will _ have to find Dawn,” Spike said. “But I’m-I’m sorted now. So I can.”

“He’d better,” Willow snapped. “‘Cause Tara took the kittens, and he wrecked the house, and just look at Giles!”

   Giles did look a bit the worse for wear. Buffy didn’t seem particularly sympathetic. “You’re going to miss your plane,” she said pointedly. “Wasn’t it this morning?”

   “I cancelled my ticket,” Giles said. “My head aches, and I believe I have a concussion. Likely shouldn’t risk an international flight. Also, we... weren’t entirely sure you were coming back this morning.” 

   Worry and relief both flashed over Buffy’s face, with just a touch of resentment. It was all that which made Spike stop pussy-footing. “Look, I’m sorry,” Spike said. “To all of you.”

   “It’s nothing,” Xander said, surprising Spike utterly. “We’ve all done crazy things under the influence.” He glanced at Buffy. “Ask her about the beer-party some time.”

   “Or the hyenas,” Buffy countered with a bit of a grin.

   “Or the chocolate,” Xander added, glancing at Giles, who cleared his throat and started cleaning his glasses.

   Spike would have loved to let Scooby history erase his little folly, but he’d done more to Giles than embarrassing anecdotes could mend. “Sorry for scaring you all,” he said. “And, uh. Sorry in particular for the whole knocking you on the head and dragging you off all tied up thing,” he said to Giles. “And... uh... the other stuff.”

   Giles regarded him for a long moment. “Well, it was hardly the first time I’ve had a half naked man perched on my lap,” he said dryly, putting his glasses back on. All three of the others stared at him in bemusement. Spike had heard enough about Giles when he was drunk and discussing the punk scene to not doubt that statement in the least.

   “Won’t do it again.”

   “Let’s not make promises we can’t keep, shall we?” Giles said with rueful grin.

 

***

“You’re letting him  _ stay _ here?” Willow tried to keep the shrillness out of her voice, but wasn’t having much luck. 

   She’d stayed quiet while Buffy had made breakfast, scrambling eggs and even offering Spike the steak in the fridge, which he had accepted gratefully. She’d stayed silent while Buffy had called the police, and then Tara, letting her know everything was okay, and thanking her for telling her to slow down and think, even though she hadn’t needed the sorbis root. She hadn’t even said anything while Spike had begged a blank video tape and set up Buffy’s VCR to record  _ Passions,  _ listening to him mutter about having missed the day before. 

   She’d stayed quiet, and tried to just be supportive, because Buffy had been emotionally frail, and yeah, according to Xander, she’d started kissy-face with Spike. Another symptom of the whole having-to-be-in-the-mental-ward thing. But this… this was getting a bit much.

Xander had headed home, Giles was out like a light on the couch, sleeping off his concussion with some pain medicine. That left Willow the only voice of reason as Buffy started to lead Spike towards the stairs. Even if he hadn’t killed Dawn, he’d hurt her. Badly. All that blood and the ruined bed…. Willow felt sick at the thought. Why had the  _ bed _ been torn apart like that? Okay, so Buffy had made a mistake, and okay, people did that. But there was no way she planned to go  _ on _ with this, was there?

Willow planted herself on the bottom step, arms spread wide to bar the way. If Buffy wanted to go up, she’d have to go through her. Which she could do, because slayer and all that, but maybe it would make her think, slow her down, like Tara had done.

Buffy didn’t try to move her, she just sighed. “Willow, I’m tired. Spike is tired, and it’s daylight. Get out of the way.”

“You didn’t see the crypt. What he did….” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. Buffy had been through so much, and now she had to deal with this. “The bed was a wreck. I think… How do you know he didn’t try and force himself on Dawn, but she got away? And he made up the being crazy so you wouldn’t stake him for it.”

There was a strange, choked off little laugh from Spike, who looked like she’d just stabbed him or something. Buffy’s face had gone white, but instead of attacking the vampire, she reached out and gently squeezed his shoulder.

“He did it to me, once!” Willow barked. “Well, okay, it wasn’t  _ that _ kind of forcing, but still.” Spike looked away. He didn’t apologize or anything, just rolled his eyes. 

“That’s not….” Buffy shook her head and sighed. “Look, Spike told me what happened, and it wasn’t… that. Not the way you think, anyway. Just, please, get out of the way. I want to go to bed.”

Willow’s thoughts flashed back to the spell…  _ curse _ she’d cast on Xander. And on Angel’s words. Her magic could help Buffy. That spell could help Buffy. It could get the truth out of Spike. But she’d promised…. She swallowed hard and forced back the thought. She still seemed to be the only one who cared about Dawn, but she’d do this without magic.

“You can’t do this, Buffy. With a blanket, he can get to the sewers just fine. Don’t let him stay in our home.”

“She’s a point about that,” Spike said. “I’d be fine with just a blanket. If… if you want me to go.”

Buffy stubbornly shook her head, her face hard. Her hand slid down his shoulder to entwine with his. “It’s  _ my _ home, Willow. Not ours. That means I get to choose who stays. And who doesn’t.”

An obvious threat in the words… and Willow caved to it. She moved out of the way, watching mutely as Buffy led Spike up the stairs.

 

 


	36. Honcho

 

 

  Dusk listened carefully, very, very carefully, for a slowing heart rate, or a racing one, or breathing that had gone shallow instead of just labored. Sadie was one of the regulars, though, and she knew when she’d had enough, without really needing anyone to monitor. This was the first time Link had let Dusk take a victim – no, a client – all by herself.

  Fortunately, Sadie was a softie. Most of the other suckers said she’d been their first solo hit, too.

  Sadie was a large, somewhat overweight motherly figure, who visited the suck house regularly, and called all the vampires her chicks. She’d been recruited by Link personally, who had first seduced her to the bite three years ago. Sadie sold Mary Kay cosmetics (and boy could Dusk taste it in her blood) and recruited her own clients as more cattle for Link. Whenever Sadie brought in a new client, she’d get a hit for free. Tonight, she’d brought in three others, two of them new.

  While Link and some of the more experienced suckers went training up the new cattle (Clients. Never call them cattle to their faces, bitch!) Dusk had been left to bite Sadie  _ all on her own. _ She’d been so excited, if she’d still been human she’d have been peeing her pants.

  The first two days in Link’s suck house (he called it the Ranch House) had mostly been just healing. He got her into a hot shower, plied her with all the pig blood she could drink, found some more of Willy’s donor-blood special delivery to heal her up quickly, and even hired a Pockla demon to reset her bones. That had hurt, but Link held her hand and told her she was doing just fine. It was all gonna be all right. He stared at her with his brown eyes, and Dusk found herself believing him.

  He gave her a room to share with two other girls, one of whom, to Dusk’s surprise, had gone to school with Buffy.

  “Oh, yeah. I was turned Graduation Day. A bunch of us were, me, Billy, Harmony.”

  “You knew Harmony?”

  Dusk had been startled to discover that Link was actually Harmony’s sire. “Oh, yeah. Link keeps an eye open whenever there’s a big battle. He found me and Harm half dead, and he saved us.” ( _ Saved _ wasn’t the word Buffy would have used, she knew.) Harmony hadn’t been obedient enough for the sucker life, though. She’d taken off on her own shortly after Link had trained her, hooked up with some other honcho who would actually let her kill. (Dusk suspected that “other honcho” had actually been Spike.)

  Link called himself “honcho” not “big bad.” It wasn’t quite as accurate. And he wasn’t near as Big Bad as Spike, though he’d laughed when Dusk called him Señor, and some of the other suckers started calling him that, too. He was less likely to hit them when they called him that.

  Link didn’t like them using the word  _ sucker, _ though they used it amongst themselves. He called them cowboys and cowgirls, and liked to dress them like that, particularly the girls. Not like  _ real _ cowgirls, of course, jeans and flannel, but in short denim skirts and tied up shirts that were little more than bikini tops and little fringed vests. He hadn’t tried to dress Dusk like that, though. After those first two days with the other girls, he’d given her her own bedroom. (The girls were jealous.) He’d stolen her her own wardrobe, and if it ran more toward Catholic Schoolgirl than toward Punk Rocker, Dusk was just as content.

  The room looked like a schoolgirl’s room, too, with teddy bears and pictures of kittens on the walls. The windows were painted, and painted shut too, but it was a real bed. Spike would have called the whole thing posh.

  It really did look posh. It looked a lot like a prep-school dorm room whenever Dusk thought about it, but she wasn’t really given a lot of time to think about it. Once she’d healed up enough that her bruises could be covered by make-up, Link had let her taste living human blood, and once she’d done that, she didn’t even care about what the room looked like, or what she was wearing, or about anything at all except having more.

  It had been with the other girls, at first. Strong-arm-jocks and some hard-core-bikers had been her first few sips of living human blood. Link let her have a taste, and then pulled her away, and then again, and again, until she was almost melting in his arms. Then she was shown to another set of cattle, then another, then another. She was fed almost exclusively on different humans for four days. And now, nearly a week after fleeing from Spike’s crypt, Dusk was on her first solo-suck-job. And it. Had been. Fantastic.

  Dusk bit Sadie on the shoulder, as the woman liked it, and she was hugged close, cuddled and called baby. And then after a bit the human had sighed and shrugged her off, and Dusk let her go, because she’d learned not to take too much. Those little nips Link had let her have at first, they had taught her how to stop after not-nearly-enough. She was glad of it. She’d been afraid, after what had happened with that girl in the alley, that she’d be unable to stop if she was ever presented with a human to bite. She was sure, almost sure, she’d end up killing. But not after Link’s excellent bite training.

  Actually, it was Spike’s training she had turned to, knowing where to bite, and where not to bite. Link didn’t try to teach her where the arteries and veins were. She wondered if she should tell him that some of the girls were getting suspiciously close to arteries, which, really, they should be avoiding if they were trying to keep the cattle alive to be milked, but... surely Link knew that already, right? If he didn’t... and if the girls didn’t.... Some distant but important part of her blood-addled mind told her,  _ probably best not to show them how much you know _ .

  Dusk let Sadie cradle her afterwards, because Link had told her the woman would want to. Before now it was one of the other suckers the vic – the cow – would cuddle up to. Sadie really did cradle her, rocking her back and forth and singing as if she were her child. Dusk was actually bored until a new smell made her uneasy, and she looked up, and saw... Sadie was crying.

  “Are... are you all right?” she asked. “Did I hurt you bad?”

  Sadie looked down. “Oh, no, my little chick,” Sadie said. “It’s only... you pretty things. You always remind me of my little Harry.”

  “Who the hell’s Harry?”

  “My baby boy. Well, I say he was my baby, he was nearly two.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Disappeared one day. I was late picking him up from day-care, it was after dark....”

  Dusk didn’t ask any more. She was almost certain the rest of this story involved the toddler being found with bite marks on his neck. This was Sunnydale. It was like a third world country in some ways.

  She leaned her head back and let herself be held, listening to Sadie’s heartbeat. It was a little fast....

  Sadie didn’t seem worried about it, so Dusk kept her eye on the clock, waiting the required twenty minutes for Sadie to start to pass out. It was sleep, really, not actual like being-knocked-out unconsciousness, but Link said it was almost universal. The cattle all did it for a bit after a good bite.

  If they weren’t farmers, Link said, this would have helped them feed, so they wouldn’t have to take the blood all at once, and could come back to them later that night. But they were farming, so they milked them, and then let the cattle recover instead. Sadie fell asleep, and Dusk left her.

  She crept out quietly and ran into Link in the hallway. “Dusk, baby,” he said. “You have fun?”

  Dusk grinned up at him, touched. “Yeah.”

  He smiled at her as he slid up beside her, putting his arm around her waist and pulling her against him. “That’s a good girl,” he said. “And you’re looking so pretty. Uh-oh.” He gently touched her lip. “Got a bit right there, baby... you should wipe that up.”

  “Do it  _ for _ me,” she said, and he kissed her.

  “So lucky to find you,” he whispered. “You’re my good luck treasure. Still hungry?”

  She shrugged.

  “I’ll see if we can’t find you someone else. You know, one of my friends is coming over tonight. He’s a warlock, but he likes a good bite.”

  She was a little nervous. “It’s... it’s not Rack, is it?”

  Link looked suspicious. “Rack been by? He got his cut last week.”

  “No,” Dusk said. Rack got a cut of the suck house proceeds? And he’d told Link she was in town.… She filed both thoughts away for later, and just said, “He just creeps me out, is all.”

  Link grinned. “Yeah, he does that. Rack’s not one of our steers. But Chuck’s a good sort. Unless you’d rather just hit the fridge?”

  “No, I’ll wait,” Dusk said, eager already. What did a warlock taste like? Were they spicy? She loved the idea of giving a bite to one of Link’s friends. It would make Link happy, and he was the honcho, and... well. It was  _ easy _ to make  _ Link _ happy.

  Link let her go and she retreated to the attic where her bedroom was. She was still hungry. The other suckers had warned her, it was hard to get quite enough to eat with merely human blood, at least the way they did it. That was why Link kept pig blood in the fridge. But it was the cheap stuff, and it tasted awful, and it was hard to want it when she knew if she was patient and listened to Link that she’d be allowed to take more humans.

  Dusk closed the door to her little room. She felt hot, strange, with Sadie’s blood inside her, more than the little nips she’d had from the other cattle. This was almost a full stomach, about a pint of the stuff, and she felt strangely tired. The aftertaste of cosmetics lingered in her mouth.

  She wished she could use a mirror, to see if her bruises were gone yet. Link said once she was prettier, it would be easier to get the cattle to like her. Boys and girls, most after the bite hit weren’t picky, but this was a high-end establishment. (He used the word  _ establishment _ .) The cattle who came here expected a certain quality of sucker. Attractive, well spoken. Young. If she was young and sweet and pretty, the cattle would like her.

  She wanted the cattle to like her. And she wanted Link to like her. This was a good place. No one made her study anatomy, or do math homework, and she could drink all the human blood she wanted, and the place was full of vampires, all of them turned when they were teenagers, or at least under twenty-two. It was like a summer camp. She was never lonely.

  She was never lonely.

  She leaned her head against the door and tried not to think about Spike. Since his coat was hung on the hook on the back, that was a self-defeating gesture. She buried her head in the soft leather, and told herself she wasn’t thinking about its owner.

  She wasn’t thinking about Spike, or about Buffy, or about any of the Scoobies or the life she’d had before she came here. That was a full time job, not thinking. No. Think about the blood. The blood was important, it was all important, much more important than Spike, and what he’d meant to her, and what he’d wanted for her, and what... what she’d done. And what he’d done to her.

  Dusk went to her bed, and turned on her little cd player, and blasted the music. Link didn’t care what she played, or how loud she played it. It wasn’t like Spike, who’d complain about her favorite boy bands, calling them insipid, and tried to make her listen to the Sex Pistols. He... had kind of been right. Compared to the Ramones, for instance, Boyz II Men was lame. But she hadn’t wanted to admit that, not to herself, and not to Spike. No. Not Spike. Blood. Think about blood. Link was going to bring her another victim – steer. To rustle. She was going to have more blood tonight. Her stomach ached. It was almost full of human blood, but she was still hungry... what was that about? Spike would have known. She could have asked him....

  It almost seemed like a dream at first when her bedroom door slammed open, and there stood Spike, all in black, holding one of the other girls, Martine, by the throat. “Thanks, pet,” he said to her. “Got the right room now.” He threw her aside, and she scuttled away from Spike, leaving one of her fringed white cowboy boots behind.

  Dusk bolted from the bed, stabbing off the music. The house was in an uproar; someone was shouting, some of the cattle were screaming, it was a wonder Dusk hadn’t heard any of it. ‘Course, the music had been meant to block everything out. Spike’s face was hard, but not the terrifying mask it had been when he’d been beating her. Dusk hadn’t realized until now how very afraid of Spike she had been. She’d been pretending she was angry, and that was why she hadn’t left the suck house, or gone to look for him, or even gone to see Buffy, or anyone. She’d told everyone at the suck house she was sick of her sire, sick of his rules, and that she just didn’t want to see anyone else. In truth she was just bloody terrified.

  But she wasn’t a bloody coward. “If you’ve come to stake me again, I’m gonna fucking fight you.”

  Spike stared at her for a long moment, his face entirely unreadable. “We could do that, sure,” he said. He swung the door closed behind him, and his eye caught on his coat on the back hook. “Little thief,” he said, lifting it up.

  “If that’s all you’ve come for,” Dusk snapped.

  “It’s not.” He looked around the room. “Very posh,” he said. Dusk swallowed. She’d  _ known _ he would call it that.

  She was still terrified, but she held her head high. “Get on with it,” she said. “And I haven’t killed anyone human, so you’re a big ass hypocrite, worse than Buffy even.”

  “I didn’t come here to stake you,” Spike said. “Though if I had... I doubt anyone would cry over it.”

  Dusk knew that. That was why she hadn’t come back.

  Then he said something that surprised her. “This is where you went, is it? Not to Tara, not to Xander. Not to Buffy. You went to a suck house.”

  None of those had seemed like options at the time. They had been? He seemed to think they had....  “Why would I go a slayer? Or a witch? Or... a guy?” Dusk asked. “I’m a vampire. I went to my own kind.”

  “These are not your kind,” Spike said.

  “Yeah,” Dusk said. “They are.”

  Spike frowned. “Maybe they are, at that.” He sounded disappointed. “I take it this means you plan to stay.”

  Dusk’s eyes narrowed. “Well, so far no one here has tried to beat me to death.”

  Spike actually looked slightly amused, which infuriated her. “Dawn–” he started.

  “It’s Dusk,” she said. “I’m Dusk now. And this is my home. And I can have all the human blood I want, and I have friends, and Link’s a better honcho than you ever were. And he likes me.”

  “Does he.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “He gives me presents, and he treats me nice. And  _ he _ knows what to do with a beautiful vampire girl when he sees one.”

  Spike regarded her. “So he’s fucking you,” he said bluntly.

  Dusk wanted to say only twice, but he’d been really nice both times. The first time was the second day, even though she was all injured and she knew she probably looked disgusting, but he’d said she was beautiful even with the bruises, and he showed her how gentle he could be, and... well, okay, she was a little woozy with the stuff the healer demon had done to her, and the human blood Link had given her to make her strong, and she didn’t really remember that first time very well. But the second time had been nice enough, and that one was real. That had been just after she’d been introduced to the cattle, and she’d had nip after nip after nip of blood, and her flesh was warm with it, and she’d just wanted  _ more _ , and he’d showed her what he could do. It was great. She wanted to ask Spike or maybe Buffy if it was true love, or if it was just something fun, because she wasn’t sure what it was, or how she should feel about it, even if it had been kinda enjoyable in a weird way.

  But she didn’t say any of that. “What’s it to you?”

  Spike nodded. “Right. Next time he wants to fuck you, charge him.”

  Dusk was startled. “What?”

  “You don’t want to give him the wrong idea, pet. He wants you here, that’s clear enough. He’s dressing you up like Darla.” Dusk looked down at her little school-girl outfit. She hadn’t realized that.

  “How do you know that?” Dusk said. “Darla was dust before you came to Sunnydale.”

  “You think the Order of Aurelius didn’t  _ talk _ ?” Spike said. “We’re vampires, not lumps. I learned the lay of the land when I first settled in SunnyD. We came here so Dru could be with her grandmum, we were a bit put out she’d been Angelused off the planet. We asked around.”

  Dusk felt stupid. “How’d you know I was here?”

  “Not many places you could have been, love. I know the demon world here.” He looked about her room again. “The Ranch House is pretty well known. Higher end, Link’ll only take a client once a week. Usually means the blokes you’re slowly killing won’t die  _ here _ , so that’s a plus for you. Buffy’ll stay off your back for a bit, if you don’t make a nuisance of yourself. Now, about Link.”

  Spike’s face was still hard and unreadable, and he spoke like he was briefing her for a fight or something. “From what the Order said when I mopped up their dregs, Link’s sire was one of the Master’s henchmen; some thirty-year-old disco fan Buffy staked before she’d been in town a week. That means Link knew Darla. The Master was picky about who he sired, so his bloodline’s rare. Darla was his little protégée, and Link knew that. No doubt he’s planning to trade on your pedigree. Some junkies will pay extra for a vamp princess. ‘Specially since your venom actually will be a bit stronger.”

   He stood up with his arms folded. “Don’t tell him it was a resire job, and play aloof. You’re better than him, and he knows it, even though he’s got a bit of thrall to him if he plays it right. Don’t let him play you, and don’t look in his eyes too long. Mention your lineage. Leverage it. And next time he wants to fuck you, charge him. Tell him the first one was free, in gratitude for the blood or whatever he gave you to help heal, but from now on he owes you.”

  “I’m not gonna  _ charge him _ ,” Dusk said. “That’s nuts.”

  “Here’s the skivvy, pet,” Spike said. “Link’s not your boyfriend. He’s not your lover. He’s your pimp. And that’s fine, so long as you know it. You see to it you’re his co-worker, not his bitch.”

  “You don’t get it,” Dusk said. “It’s not like that.”

  “Yeah, he’s still training you,” Spike said. Dusk scoffed, and he grinned, almost laughing. “Don’t look at me like that. If you’re gonna sell yourself for money, do it right. He give you your own victim yet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Something gentle and easy. Next he’s gonna bring around a friend of his, someone nice. Careful with it, there might be something in this friend’s blood, a drug, some magic, something. You’ve got a problem in that it’s human blood to start with, and you’re gonna keep wanting more. Don’t let it control you. A nip of some magic’s nice, but _ you’re _ the drug here, love. Don’t get hooked yourself.”

  Link and his warlock friend....

  “This friend will add sex into the bite, or maybe after.”

  “That’s not–”

  “Link’s not dressing his cowgirls like strippers because it’s cute, pet. This is a brothel. Not every blood-junkie will expect it, but enough will, and _ every _ one will expect your body after, one way or another. You have to be on the ball. It’s a business, and you’re cunning enough to play him, but only if you don’t let your guard down.” He looked sad. “I’m not gonna be here to protect you. You’re gonna have to do it yourself.”

  Dusk was annoyed. “Link likes me. That’s all.  _ And _ I get human blood this way,  _ and _ I get what I want, from someone who  _ appreciates _ me, and  _ admits _ it.”

  Spike raised his eyebrow. “Right. Like I said. Charge him.”

  Dusk glared. “What if  _ I  _ want to have sex with _ him? _ ”

  “Then pay him,” Spike said. “This is services rendered, love. And don’t you forget it.”

  Dusk didn’t like this. Any of this. It wasn’t the story in her head that she was telling about this place. She’d been thinking dorm rooms and fun and a new boyfriend and plenty of human blood just walking in, delivery. Not whore-house and pimps and bitches and selling herself. “This... this is a good place,” she tried to say.

  Spike nodded. “It’s not too bad, some suck joints are total dumps,” he admitted. “Link’s pretty high end, which is why he wants you. The junk-corners wouldn’t give a shit about your pedigree. But there’s prices to be paid for your own room and pretty clothes. Careful about who he brings you. Some secondary drugs might as well eat your brain, which is just as good as dusting you. Lots of your victims will be dying to start with – cancer, other addictions. It’s not the healthy who choose this as their kink. You’ll taste it in the blood. The vics you can’t stomach, refuse.”

  “Spike, that’s not–”

  “It’ll reinforce the idea that you’re not  _ his _ , you’re yours. You’re  _ working _ with him, you’re not his minion. Now, you’re still healing up, so right now you’re weaker than Link, but by the time you’re full strength, you’re probably a bit stronger. Link’s no more than nine. His sire was no more than thirty. And your bloodline was stronger to start with.”

  Spike looked around the room again. “Now, you’re being groomed as his golden child. He’s dressing you up as such, anyway. If he doesn’t give in to what you ask for, threaten to walk. And be ready to follow through. He won’t cut bait. He wants you bad.”

  Dusk wanted to protest that Link just liked her, and was going to be her boyfriend, but the words dried in her mouth. “W-why?” she asked instead.

  Spike cocked his head. “Why do you think? Money. That’s all he cares about, blood, money, and power. The holy trinity. He’s one of Rack’s. Rack demands his cut. Oh, and if Rack does show, play dumb, like I taught you. If you do end up having to walk, you’ll have to cut a deal with Rack, – he’s likely wanted what he could get of you since I showed you to him – so you  _ are _ a bit better off here than freelance. If you do need to go freelance, ask around for Diana. She’s another freelancer. She’ll bitch you out, but she’ll show you the ropes if you agree to stay out of her hair, and don’t cut in on her clients.”

  Spike seemed to be going down a checklist in his head. “Don’t let Link send you to L.A. Or any other suck-joint. Stay in Sunnydale where you know the layout. Demand one night off a week. Even if it means going out to buy your own blood, there’s gotta be one night his clients can’t touch you. You gotta be allowed to go outside anytime you want. I think this place has sewer access. Look for bolt holes down there, too, where you can hide if you need to, and don’t tell anyone where. Don’t detach. That’s what Link trades on, that you’ll start to think of your body and your bite as  _ his. _ They’re not. They’re yours. Oh, and you’d do best to still go hunting.”

  Dusk’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you didn’t want me to kill.”

  “Hunt the nasties and the newborns, love, like I taught you. Even a rabbit if you can’t find any bugger else. You’re a vampire. You have to kill, just like Buffy does. The demon in you demands a sacrifice regularly, or it starts to eat your mind. It doesn’t have to be human. It doesn’t have to be pretty. But if you don’t kill  _ something  _ every once in a while you’re gonna die inside, little by little, day by day. That’s the thing about suckers. The demon in them is starving, even with all the blood.”

  The idea terrified Dusk. She hadn’t realized that was why Spike had been teaching her demon slaying. Was that what had happened to him? When he first got the chip he’d thought he couldn’t fight anybody, not even demons. Willow and Xander said he’d tried to kill himself.... Dusk suddenly wanted to hold him.

  Which was what got her into this situation in the first place, dammit.

  “Why do you care what happens to me?” Dusk said. “You’re all in love with Buffy, right?”

  “Yeah,” Spike said. “I am. But you’re not going to find that kind of emotion here, so quit looking for it. I came here to make sure you’re not out killing humans. You’re not.” He made a slight salute. “Cheers.”

  “What if I had been?” Dusk demanded.

  Spike gazed at her. “Do you really want the answer to that?” When she didn’t answer he pasted a grim smile on his face. “Wasn’t gonna make Buffy do it.”

  “That’s cold.”

  “You attacked me, love. There’s consequences for that.”

  “I did not! I was just trying to show you how I... what-what we could be. I mean, you did it to Buffy.”

  “I chained her up and talked to her once, pet,” Spike said. “Well, threatened her, too. But there’s one stage of evil you don’t throw at people you love, no matter how hot with blood you are. I never tried to rape her. You crossed that line.”

  “That wasn’t rape.”

  Spike’s eyebrow raised again. “What would you call it, then?”

  Dusk was at a loss. How could he think it had been rape? Okay, yeah, he’d said no, but if he hadn’t really wanted it, he wouldn’t have responded. That’s how guy parts worked, wasn’t it? “Well, it... it just... it wasn’t rape. I mean, come on, I saw. You were into it.”

  Spike stared at her for a moment, and then suddenly lunged. He grabbed her hair, yanked her up by it, and twisted her arm behind her painfully. It was the right arm, it was still healing, and it hurt like hell. She struggled and cried out, and when that didn’t work, she yelled at him. “Let me go!”

  “Why?”

  “It hurts!”

  “Stop the hurting.”

  She twisted her head up to look at him. “What?”

  “Go on.” He said. His mouth was very close to her ear, his tone dark. Intimate. “Stop it. Stop hurting. You don’t like it, stop the pain.”

  “You’re the one hurting me!”

  “You must like it. Can’t you stop the hurt? Can’t you control it? No, it’s all because you want to be hurting like this, don’t you.”

  Dusk felt sick. “Okay, fine, I get it, let me go!”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t... I don’t like it!”

  She struggled, but he was so much stronger than her, and it just kept hurting. He held her like that for another moment, until she started to whimper.

  “Please?”

  With one final wrench, he released her. She fell to the floor and grunted, trying to sit up. God damn, her arm hurt. “That wasn’t fair.”

   “Nothing is,” Spike said. “It’s not fair that you were grabbed in the night by an idiot teenage fledge. It’s not fair that you were tortured, violated, and murdered. It’s not fair that you were possessed by a demon who doesn’t even understand yet how unfair all that was.” Spike shook his head as he looked at her, and she couldn’t help but see the contempt.

  “You just wish I was still Dawn!” Dusk yelled at him. “Well, I’m not! It’s not fair to try and make me into her!”

  “I know you’re not Dawn,” Spike said, and she heard the disgust. “I can’t miss it. My niblet might have killed someone if she had to. She’d drink blood if she had to to live. She’d whine and bitch and make everything about herself, ‘cause she was a teenage hormone bomb. But there’s no chance, none at all, that she’d ever have chained anyone up and tried to do what you did to me. Let alone claiming it was ‘cause she loved ‘em.”

  Tears stabbed at her eyes. She hadn’t even realized that what she was doing could have been called... that. She hadn’t thought of it as an attack. It was just her, and Spike, and... the dominant boss factor stuff which she didn’t really understand. She’d known he liked Buffy, and he said Buffy liked being boss. She’d thought he was just saying no ‘cause of Buffy. It... it had made sense when she’d planned it! It had seemed... sweet... and sexy. And it had seemed so unfair when he’d been hitting her and hitting her. He’d... it had  _ looked _ like he’d liked it.

  “You don’t understand love, pet.” His voice had gone very gentle. “And that’s fine. You go be a vampire. Most don’t need love, not the way human people do. And if you want to go by Dusk now, that’s all right with me. But don’t you forget her.”

  “Who?”

  “Dawn. Don’t you forget that little girl.” His voice got very soft. She felt almost jealous of the tenderness in it. “She made mad-scientist concoctions in her kitchen. She would jump head-first into danger without a thought to herself. She could be unflinchingly selfish, and then unfailingly generous, all in the space of an hour. She felt everything, good and bad, love and hate, with a passion of life that you only scrape the surface of when you try to suck it out of someone else. And she was murdered, and all that’s left is you.”

  “So?” Dusk said. “I’m not her anymore.”

  “I get that,” he said. “You’re not her. But, you see, I loved her.”

  “So?”

  “So, I need you to know that. I need you to respect that murdered child.”

  Dusk hadn’t considered that what had happened to her would be called  _ murder _ .  _ Turned _ . The word didn’t sound like  _ murder _ , even if she realized Dawn’s soul had wandered off somewhere.  _ Murdered _ instead of  _ turned _ . It was a word that sounded just as bad as  _ pimp _ instead of  _ boyfriend. _ “Well. I’m a demon now. What the hell do you want?”

  He cocked his head. “Your life,” he said. “I want you to live a life, even as a demon, that that little girl would have been proud of.”

  Dusk glared at him. “And what about you?” she said, her voice as nasty as she could make it. “Big bad, William the Bloody, scourge of Europe. Are you living a life  _ William _ would be proud of?”

  Spike gazed at her for a long moment, and there was something in his eyes, some pain that hadn’t been there before. It hurt, seeing it. It made her guts twist and her heart clench as if it could still beat. Then the pain faded, and softened, and he smiled a little.

  “I am now.”

  He stepped forward and Dusk cringed, expecting him to strike her. He did reach out, and he did grab her head, but it was gentle. He only held her steady as he bent and kissed her forehead, just... just like he used to do before... when they were still... family....

  She wanted to put her arms around him, and beg him for forgiveness, or tell him she forgave him, or plead with him to just forget the whole terrible night ever happened and start over, pretend that all that had happened was cartoons and pizza and some stupid homework. Then she could come home and play with the kittens and curl up in his lap and... and be family again.

  But all she did was stand frightened and motionless as he held her, and then let her go. “Bye, niblet,” he said.

  She thought at first he was going to add, “I love you.” His voice sounded like it usually did when he said things like that. But no. And then he was gone. And she realized he’d left his coat on the bed beside her, and she caught it up, and she was tempted to run after him and tell him he forgot it, but she didn’t. She just held it for a long moment, and tried to tell herself that vampires don’t cry.

  She knew it wasn’t true.

 

 


	37. Parent

 

 

The crickets were insanely loud. 

Buffy sat on the back porch, looking out at the night, waiting. Just… waiting.

They hadn’t been able to find Dawn, not in a week of looking. She hadn’t gone to Tara, the butcher hadn’t seen her, and (small bit of good news) there hadn’t been any increases in mysterious throat-trauma deaths, so if she was killing, she was being very careful about it. Spike had confirmed that Dawn would need blood, and lots of it, if she was going to recover from the beating he’d given her. He also kept claiming she had to be in Sunnydale. And alive. Somewhere.

Dating Spike hadn’t been exactly what Buffy had thought it would be. Actually, Buffy wasn’t sure what she  _ had _ thought it would be, but it kept surprising her, anyway. Partly what surprised her was everyone else. She thought they’d be majorly opposed. After that first day… they’d all just seemed to swallow and accept it, with glum disapproval, but genuine love for Buffy, which… she was touched. 

    Giles hadn’t made any more noises about leaving town (which was good for the Magic Box, because Anya still hadn’t returned.) He hadn’t explicitly said he was staying, but he hadn’t bought another plane ticket, either. He had moved off Buffy’s couch, setting up in the back room at the Magic Box, though he came over for dinner often.

Xander came over a lot, too. He and Willow sank into depression and watched a lot of bad Bollywood, which wasn’t something Buffy could stomach much these days, so she mostly just left them to it. As a result, most of her time with Spike was spent at his crypt. He’d cleaned up the lower level, and retrieved the kittens from Tara, saying Dawn would want them when she came home. (Buffy found that almost painfully sweet.) The sex (which they had had almost daily) had ranged from heart-breakingly tender to violent, raunchy, and kinky in the extreme. He was inventive, attentive, and unfailingly exciting. But he hadn’t tried to bite her (well… beyond bruising, anyway) since that night in the mansion. 

Sleeping together, which they had done less often, was both wonderful and terrifying. For both of them, as it turned out. For one, their sleep schedules were a little off. Buffy stayed up late, but usually got to bed before sunrise. Spike prefered to stay awake the whole night if he could and sleep the day away (though he was always awake for  _ Passions _ .) But sleeping together was different from the sex. It scared her. And the reason why it scared her scared her even more. 

    She loved it. It felt like snuggling in with her perfect opposite, yin and yang curled up against each other when they weren’t even whole without the other. It was overwhelming and frightening and she was afraid she was going to break it, or that Spike would, or that the whole thing was going to burst. She had felt ripped apart when everything had broken with Angel, and it hadn’t been this intense. What would happen to her if this died? What would happen to both of them?

    But it was lovely. She found herself daydreaming about snuggling more often than she had sex flashbacks (and the sex was awesome, so she had those a lot, too.) Buffy kept finding she couldn’t wake up without being surprised he was still there, and kept waking herself up to check. And Spike had nightmares.

   Buffy kept quiet at first. Spike’s sudden waking, his shaking, occasionally shouting in his sleep, it was all a little frightening. What could cause a nightmare for a  _ vampire _ ? And the way he’d snuggle against her afterward, as if she were a life preserver, and he was drowning….  When she’d finally said something, during a quiet moment of just hanging out together in front of the TV, he confessed he’d been dreaming about a lot of things. He still dreamed about her death, for one. And Dawn’s attack. And his mother. And then he’d looked away and muttered something about some other early stuff when he was a fledge that the whole unlocked door had made a lot closer. 

   He seemed ashamed by it. Not of what had happened, but by his reaction to it. Normal. He’d called it normal. For people in abusive situations, that abuse was their normal. It didn’t mean it was pleasant. It didn’t mean it could just be shrugged off. It just meant it was… normal. When she’d pointed that out to him, he’d turned away from her and waved her off. Then the beer bottle he’d been holding inexplicably shattered in his clenched fist. 

   He’d stared in bewilderment at his bleeding hand for a moment, and a quietly hysterical laugh escaped. Then he completely changed the subject, and taught her how to make Flowering Onions, of all things. Wouldn’t even let her look at his hand. But it was that conversation about his nightmares and the cause of them that made Buffy offer, if he wanted to, to come to group on Tuesday.

He had refused, point blank, calling the whole thing bollocks. And then, without a word, he’d showed up Tuesday evening to walk her to the library, plunked himself down in the circle, and just listened. Him, and Buffy, and Tara, all in a little knot, all silent for their different reasons, all grieving in their different ways.

It was there that Buffy had come to a realization of where Dawn might be. As they were folding up the chairs to go, she’d seen a bandage peeking out of the collar of one of the other regulars, a woman named Sadie, whose son had been murdered by vampires (though she never quite put it that way. You learned to read between the lines in Sunnydale.) Sadie always seemed a little odd, and by the end of group usually pretty agitated, and Buffy realized she’d seen that behavior before. In Riley. 

“Spike? Could Dawn be at a suck house?” 

Spike looked horrified. “I taught her better than that!” he said gruffly.

“I taught her better than to sneak out at night to meet boys,” Buffy pointed out.

Spike looked grave, frowned, and said he’d check it out. 

    “I’ll come with you.”

Spike had, very reasonably, pointed out that no suck house in Sunnydale was going to think very kindly about the slayer suddenly showing up on their doorstep. “I know where they are,” he said. 

    “They?” Buffy was surprised to hear there was more than one. Then she realized, no, Sunnydale. She really should have been surprised if there wasn’t.

   “Yeah, different styles, high-end buggers who call themselves farmers to the low-end trulls who were snacking off your ex.”

   “Those ones were low end?”

   “Did they look high end?” Spike asked. “Most of the high-enders will only take a vic once a week. Keeps the cattle... well, not healthy, but they’re less likely to up and die in your arms. The house Riley was in? Those skanks didn’t give a shit. There’s four houses in town just now. Well, three houses, and Diana.”

   “Who?” 

   “Freelancer, goth-chick, makes housecalls. I’ll check with all of them.”

   He’d left the library without her, his silhouette looking strange without his coat. It had disappeared with Dawn. 

   A silencing of half the crickets and a rustle in the bushes told Buffy Spike was back. He came up to her grim faced and silent, and sat down beside her without looking at her. 

   “Any luck?” Buffy asked. 

   “Yeah,” Spike said, looking out on the night.

   “You found her?”

   He nodded. “She was at Link’s place.”

   Buffy had never heard of this  _ Link _ . “Where?”

   “Highest end suck house in town,” Spike said, rather than give an address. He wouldn’t really look at Buffy. “She’s not killing.”

   Buffy heaved a sigh of relief. “Well. At least there’s that.”

   “Yeah.”

   He didn’t say anything for a long, long time after that, and Buffy sat beside him, waiting for... something.

   “I told her what she’d need to know,” he said. “How to refuse a vic, how to keep Link from using thrall on her. To be in power, you know? And then I told Link she’d better not disappear.” He chuckled a little. “Chased the guy through his own house and nearly took his head off. Don’t want to kill him, though. Link’s a coward, but he’s good at what he does. Don’t want to leave a vacuum for a worse sucker than him to take over.”

   “Like who?”

   “Like those trulls Riley was with? The good suckers, they won’t take you night after night. They know you need to recover. Riley was probably hitting a bunch of houses to feed that little inner-demon.” He glanced at Buffy. “You don’t go to a crack-house like that one unless the good places have closed the door on you.”

   Buffy was glad she hadn’t known that before, when she was still pissed over Riley. She’d have gone on a major sucker vendetta, and completely changed the dynamic of Sunnydale. The junkies had to go somewhere.... Yeah. Better she hadn’t known.

   “Link’ll treat her okay. Won’t dare dust her after that.” He glanced at Buffy with a bit of a grin. “Thrall does nothing to a strong enough will. And his is crap compared to what Dru’s was.” He nodded, as if convincing himself. “It’ll be okay. She’s... gonna be okay.”

   “You left her there?”

   “I can’t make her come home,” he said. “Not after what I did to her. I nearly killed her, Buffy.”

   “She nearly–”

   “I know what she did,” he said. “We’re never gonna be what we were. Not with the innocence to it.” He laughed softly. “I know. Sounds daft, innocence and vampires. But....”

   “No,” Buffy said. She’d seen it, too, with Dawn on that swing set, chasing rabbits, talking about Evil Christmas. There had been a purity in that, which she knew was dead as Dawn was now.

   “I can see her going far in that world,” he finally said, his voice a little wistful. “I can see her in ten years, some grand Madame Coquette, sucker princess with an angel’s face and a demon’s heart. A whole stable of fledges at beck and call, pretty and powerless before her.” He smiled softly. “I can see junkies bowing at her feet, begging for just one taste of her bite. I can see her... with her pick of victims, movie stars, musicians, millionaires, all sampled like fine wine and left to recover in... demonic massage parlors. Maybe she’ll pick up other demons, a succubus or two, make a whole den of it. She’d be powerful. She’d be safe, in time, like any madame is safe. Money. Influence. Her own minions to guard the doors. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that.”

   Buffy was envisioning this life he’d invented for her. It seemed likely; Dawn was always good at demanding what was hers. He was right. She’d go far in that world. And she wasn’t killing, that was good. She was about to say she was glad of it, when she looked over and saw that Spike was crying.

   “Hey,” she said. “Not killing, right? That’s a good thing.”

   “I’d almost rather she was,” he said. He rubbed at his eyes. “I know you don’t get that.”

   Buffy really didn’t. But she trusted Spike, so she put a hand on his arm. “Explain it to me.”

   He swallowed. “Killing is hot. It’s brief, and then it’s  _ over _ . What she’s doing... with those victims – and don’t kid yourself, they’re victims.”

   “I know.”

   “It’s slow. And it’s cold.” He looked at the ground. “Can I trust you?”

   “How?”

   “Can I be honest with you?”

   Buffy considered this. For a long time she considered it. But she had trusted him with her life, and Dawn’s life, she’d trusted him with the fate of the world itself. She had lain down and let him inside of her. She’d meant what she said before – she was willing to be his soul, willing to try and make this, whatever this was, work. But it wasn’t a single decision. Every single time something came up, she realized she’d have to decide it again. “Yes,” she said. She steeled herself for a tale every bit as horrific as Angel’s about his sister.

   “I used to keep pets,” he said. “When I was younger, make myself a plaything or two. Easy way to get a nip of blood in without getting so hot you make mistakes. Take a whole victim’s worth at once, yo-yoing like that, famine to feast. We can do it, but I never liked it. That’s why I killed so often my younger days, I like me a full belly. I’d take as much as I needed and then leave the rest to rot. Wasteful.

   “So Angelus taught me, chain a vic up and snack. I’ve done that too. Leaving ‘em on ice, like. That’s ugly, but it works. Very ugly. Even Harmony hated that. But a pet.... Blood junkies. Trained up to want the bite, I...” His eyes were distant. “I had to stop. It was killing me.”

   “What do you mean?”

   “You’re killing ‘em slow. You get to know ‘em, get to liking them. They’re not just faceless cattle, they become people. It’s colder.”

   “I’m... not sure I understand.”

   Spike closed his eyes. “You go through the cemetery, and you stake the newborns that come out of the ground, yeah? Do you remember their faces?”

   Buffy shook her head. “Not really.”

   He nodded. Then he looked at her. “Do you remember mine?”

   “Of course I do.”

   “So what’s the difference?”

   “I... I don’t understand.”

   “What’s the difference? Between my face, and theirs, what?”

   Buffy wanted to say piercing blue eyes, keen teeth, cheekbones to die for, any of those things that made him so damn pretty to look at, but she could tell that wasn’t what he meant. “I don’t....” She shrugged helplessly.

   “You know it,” he said. “You know my face. You know me.” He looked back out at the night. “You get to know those vics. They come back, week after week, and you watch them die slow. You watch them choose to die, pour out their lives, piecemeal them out to... to some monster.” He swallowed. “And you can’t help but realize, you’re the monster. It kills your heart. Just killing, your victims are nameless, faceless happy meals. A suck house? You’re sucking the life out of Tom, Dick, Harry, Mildred, whoever. You know them.” He looked down. “It’s colder.”

   “I guess I can see that.”

   “You’re also selling yourself,” he said. He looked over at her. “The other night. You gave yourself to me. How did that feel?”

   Buffy wanted to say heavenly but really there were no words for it. And it wasn’t quite like being back in heaven, anyway. Heaven had been clean, and that sort of wasn’t. It was very demonic, actually, and the risk had been there, and she’d known it had been (which was part of the draw, ultimately). But it was clear. It erased everything that made the world bad or painful, and had left nothing but him, and the need to be close to him, and it had been... a kind of bliss. She blushed and looked down. “Good.”

   Spike smiled softly, touched by her shyness. “Yeah. Very good. Now, pay me for it.”

   Buffy looked up, and his face was hard, and she felt sick. Even him asking, even (she knew) only as an example, not only cheapened it, but made the whole thing ugly. She cringed.

   “Okay,” she said. “I get it.”

   He nodded, and looked back out at the night. “When you kill someone, they’ve paid for that with their lives. That’s my gift, that’s... that’s me. As much as it was you, in your blood, when I give back like that, I’m giving me. For a death, or a lover, that intimacy... it means something. But to sell that?” He swallowed. “Is there a price, for yourself? Even the pets I had, I killed them eventually. But to just sell that?” He shook his head and sank a little. “I know you’re glad that she’s not killing, but....”

   “Sounds like you think she’d be more human if she was.”

   Spike lowered his head.

   “If she had been killing. Would you have just dusted her?”

   He wouldn’t look at her, and his face was expressionless as he stared into the night. “Truthfully, Buffy, I probably would have told her to get out of town. Quickly.” He was perfectly still, but she noticed a slight tremor. “Is that evil?”

   “It’s weak,” she said. “And it would lead to evil. But it’s human.” She shrugged. “After all, I’ve done it.” 

   He knew she had. With him.

   He sighed. “I wanted better for her,” he said. “I tried. I really tried.”

   “I know. Raising Dawn’s no picnic. I’ve been there.”

   He closed his eyes. “That wasn’t what I wanted for her.”

   Buffy didn’t know what to say. Finally, she knew what would comfort him, so she let herself climb onto his lap, straddling him gently, put her arms around him, hold him close. His face buried itself in her throat, nuzzling the bite mark he had left earlier. He kissed it gently. 

   “None of this was what I wanted for her, either,” she said.

   He tilted his head back and gazed at her. “I guess we both mucked it up, then.”

   “I don’t know,” Buffy said. “It’s hard raising a teenage girl on your own. Though I guess... neither one of us are, anymore.”

   “On our own?”

   “Raising her.”

   “Yeah. We might have to be done with her.” He fondled Buffy’s hair. “But I haven’t given up on her yet.” He looked sad. “I ‘forgot’ my coat. Perfect excuse for her.”

   “And she didn’t take you up on it?”

   “Not yet,” he said. “I hoped she would. But... we’ll give it time.” He nuzzled the bite mark again. It was nearly healed already, just a little red scar, a few tiny punctures.

   “Are you ever gonna bite me again?”

   “Scared to,” he whispered. “It really is addictive. Kinda for both.” But he kissed her throat with absolute abandon, and Buffy gasped.

   “We’ll... um... have to... have to do... some research,” Buffy muttered, between gasps and sighs and little whimpers.

   “Uh-huh.”

   “We... w-we could ask... Giles...”

   “Right.”

   “Or you could stop tormenting me like that and fuck me already,” Buffy hissed in his ear, and Spike groaned himself. They fell off the porch, into the shrubbery, which was very uncomfortable, so Buffy rolled him deeper into the shadows on the lawn, which was cold and damp but it was Spike, so fuck it.

   The really annoying thing was, even Giles probably wouldn’t know the best bite-to-time ratio to keep an addiction from happening. The only person she knew who she could have asked (not that she would) would have been Riley... and hell. _ He  _ was never gonna be dumb enough to come back to Sunnydale. Thank god. 

 


	38. Ex

 

 

  Agent Riley Finn slammed on the accelerator again, zooming his shiny SUV down the highway. On the side of the road a little green sign flashed in his headlights “Welcome to Sunnydale,” with a little population note on the bottom. It flipped past as he drove, disappearing again into darkness.

   The black military-issue cell phone meant to communicate with his team went off. He glanced at it. Sam’s number. He set it down, ignoring its pointed little beep until it settled down again. He hadn’t slept much. They’d been monitoring the mission, but he and Sam had been fighting a lot lately, and... well. He didn’t need her for this mission. He had another team-member to recruit.

   The thought made him slow down below the speed limit again, making the cars behind swerve around him. He’d been leapfrogging like this ever since LA, where he’d left Sam and the rest of the team. Sam hadn’t been too thrilled at the idea of being left behind, but... tough. He really didn’t want the complication when he went to see Buffy.

   He knew, he just  _ knew _ Buffy would jump at the chance to join him on a mission again. That was why he’d arranged for the drop-off to be in Sunnydale, because he knew the area, he knew the locals, and... well. Buffy.

   “Tell me truthfully,” Sam’s voice echoed in his memory. “Did you just set this up so that you could see your ex again? I thought we went over this! She never loved you, and she treated you like dirt. Why are you still so hung up on her?”

   “I’m not hung up on her!” Riley had shouted. “But she’s the best person for this fight. Once I explain it to her, once she sees, she’ll know she’s better off working for the military than she is freelance. Remember, this isn’t just about the demon, it’s about the recruitment.”

   “And once she’s recruited?” Sam had asked. “Is she gonna be working with us, or with another unit?”

   Riley had no idea. He’d tried to placate his young bride, but she wasn’t hearing it. Of course, ever since that thing with the succubus, she’d had trouble trusting him. He’d tried to explain, the only way to get close enough to the nest was to let the demoness think she had what she wanted. It made sense. Like undercover narcotics cops, having to take a sniff of cocaine now and then. It wasn’t the same as cheating, he hadn’t  _ wanted _ to be there, even if he  _ had _ been the one to volunteer for the mission. Three times. But he didn’t get the info the first time, and the second time he’d caught a whiff of a much bigger fish, and, well by the third time it was expected, and avoiding the succubus before he signaled the rest of the team to take out the main nest, well, it would have looked suspicious.

   He knew what he was doing. He knew it had drained his life energy, but he was strong enough to take it. And he had killed the demon, ultimately. What did Sam want of him?

   Well. Buffy would have gotten it. She totally understood giving yourself over to the demons.

   And he was stronger, now. Better. He’d gotten more experience in Central America, he knew he’d be man enough for her this time. Sam was a complication... but he hadn’t thought he’d ever get a chance to come back to Sunnydale, let alone the perfect excuse... reason, real reason to recruit the slayer.

   Buffy. Why hadn’t she stopped him from going? She was supposed to stop him from going, so he’d know she really loved him. But... maybe he had been right, and she hadn’t loved him. Or maybe now, after a year, she knew what she was missing. She’d never had a good man before. He knew he could remind what it was like to be with a good guy again. 

   He slammed on the accelerator again. Buffy, Buffy, he had to get a chance to see Buffy.

   For a moment, he actually forgot the name of the demon he was supposed to be tracking.

 

***

    “…things are back in Sunnydale. Last time, it was because the First wanted to drive Angel crazy. We have to figure out what it wants this time.”

   They were all gathered in the dining room, listening to Buffy talk about the Bringers that Spike had stumbled on. Willow was trying to concentrate and even take notes, but it was hard to focus. It had been hard to focus on a lot of things since the Visitations had started.

   “She’ll probably find some way to make this all about Spike or Dawn if she doesn’t make it all about her,” Jenny commented. “She’s a good kid, but Buffy has always been a little self-centered, hasn’t she?”

   Willow knew better than to answer. Jenny wasn’t really there, after all, not in body anyway. The ghost of Jenny Calendar had been visiting Willow since Christmas Eve.

   Christmas had been really depressing. Xander had actually sat down with Spike to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, probably because Spike was watching it anyway when he’d come over. Xander didn’t do the Snoopy Dance or anything, but it was starting to get frustrating, the way Spike was… taking over their lives. 

   Not that Willow had ever had any great hatred for Spike, but Buffy wasn’t  _ talking _ to Willow anymore. You’d think she’d make best friends a priority sometimes. But Willow was beginning to suspect, through no direct communication about it, that Buffy… wasn’t her best friend any more. That maybe she trusted this new evil boyfriend  _ more _ . And Willow was okay with the evil-but-chipped-up boyfriend… but not with losing her best friend to him. It had never been like this when Buffy was dating Angel or Riley. Willow hadn’t felt displaced  _ then _ . 

   Dawn’s absence this year had been just as obvious and painful as Joyce’s absence last year, and Willow was further annoyed because here she was supposed to be Jewish. And yeah, they hadn’t protested her lighting a menorah or anything, but Willow had never been particularly religious in that area, and she sort of worshiped the Great Goddess now, anyway. Except that she couldn’t worship the Great Goddess with Tara at Solstice, either, because... Tara still wasn’t open for that kind of thing.

   She’d seen her at school. They  _ did _ share a class. They chatted, small talk, Buffy, some gossip from the Wicca club, but for the most part Tara stayed out of Willow’s life, and Willow vacillated back and forth between trying to jump back into Tara’s, or getting angry again and giving her the cold shoulder. She wished she hadn’t inadvertently broken up Xander and Anya. Not only was Xander miserable about it, but a wedding was a great thing for bringing people together….

   It had been months since Willow had been off magic. Months, now. Unless you counted Jenny, but Jenny wasn’t Willow’s fault. She’d been minding her own business, feeling sorry for herself while going on an ice cream run to drown her sorrows when Jenny’s ghost had shown up, commenting on magic and the emotional healing powers of Ben & Jerry’s. 

   The ghost had been talking about magic a lot. And about addiction. How anyone could become addicted to anything given the right circumstances and that didn’t make them bad. Or what they were addicted to bad. There were people who were addicted to health food, for example. Or computer games. She kept saying she understood what Willow was going through. She was very sympathetic.

   Willow hadn’t spoken to anyone about Miss Calendar except for Giles. She’d gone to the Magic Box the day after she appeared, breaking her own injunction against staying away from magic stuff, but... she kind of wanted to talk to Giles about it alone. “A ghost, you say?” he’d said. “Of Miss Calendar? What did she say?”

   “That she’d come to me because of the spell I did for Buffy,” Willow said. “That I’d opened a door, and so it was easy for her to peer through from-from the other side. For me, anyway.”

   “What did she claim to want?”

   “Not a lot,” Willow said. “She said she couldn’t answer any of my questions about the afterlife–”

   “Most spirits cannot,” Giles had said, leafing through one of his books. “But Jenny’s spirit has passed on, I... you say she came through because of the door you opened?”

   “That’s what she said.” Willow sat down. “She wanted to tell me, I’d done the right thing.”

   Giles sat back, regarding her. “That’s a deeply strange thing for a ghost to say. Generally they come to complete unfinished business, or to give some kind of warning.  _ All is well, and you’ve done right _ isn’t really the kind of message they give unless someone was searching for that kind of reassurance.”

   Willow looked down. “Well... what if I was?”

   “What do you mean?”

   “Something Buffy said to Xander. That we didn’t know where she was. Giles, what if she wasn’t in hell? What if she was somewhere nice, and that’s why she’s so unhappy, and why she feels like she’s still so dead she can only date a vampire? What if this is my fault?”

   Giles hesitated. “Perhaps it is,” he said. “And perhaps... that’s all right.” He took off his glasses for a moment and leaned his face against his steepled hands, thinking. He rubbed his face before wiping his glasses and replacing them. “Did Jenny say anything else?”

   “Nothing about you,” Willow said gently.

   Giles nodded.

   “But I only saw her the once, and–”

   “Let’s hope that’s all. She gave you your message, assuaged your guilt. Let us hope she has returned to peace.”

   “And if she hasn’t?”

   “Then I can perform an exorcism,” Giles said. “But I’d be loath to, such spells are not kind to spirits. If there is no action Jenny feels needs to be performed to allow her soul to be at peace, then... there might be no alternative, if she is trapped here.”

   “I could just be going crazy,” Willow said.

   Giles shook his head. “With the magics you opened, Willow, I’d be more surprised if spirits  _ weren’t _ attracted to your aura. But do let me know if it happens again.” He had reached out and touched her arm warmly, earnestly, and said, “We don’t have to be alone in this.”

   “But the poor man  _ is _ always alone,” Jenny had said, coming through the wall. “I’d rather stay a while, help him.” The spirit had smiled fondly at the old watcher. “Give him the silent support he needs to get off his own little addiction.” She’d looked over at Willow. “Would that be all right, do you think? Just for a while. Watching over you all. Watching him. Who watches the watcher, after all? I’ve missed him.”

   “If it happens again?” Willow had said.

   “Exorcism,” Giles had said again. “Unless she gives you some indication of how you can send her back to her plane.”

   “But I like it here,” Jenny said. “Who wouldn’t rather be here, than nowhere, or in the nether space, like poor Buffy’s soul was?” She shook her head. “Poor little lost souls. We’re all lost souls, until we’re called back home.” She had looked up pleadingly at Willow. “Don’t send me away, Willow. You were my favorite student, so gifted, so clever. I still have things to teach you.”

   “Would that send you away?” Willow asked.

   “Pardon?” Giles asked.

   “Her. Would... listening to what she wanted, say, if she wanted to get to be a teacher again. Is that all we’d need to do? What she asked?”

   “In general,” Giles said.

   “And these exorcisms, they hurt spirits?”

   “My understanding is it would.”

   Willow frowned. “All right,” she said. “I’ll... I’ll let you know if she comes back, if I think I need an exorcism.”

   Giles had seemed satisfied, and Willow hadn’t mentioned Jenny again.

   Even though Jenny had come back. A lot. More and more often as time went on. Willow was starting to find her comforting, really. It was like when she’d first had Tara, a little secret all her own. Jenny was really only talking about computers and keeping an eye on things, not like when Willow had had Tara, but... it felt sort of the same, and she didn’t want to hurt the spirit of her former teacher. All the ghost wanted to do was keep an eye on Giles, and just teach Willow a bit more. So Willow let her stay. Even though she could be pretty distracting in Scooby meetings.

   “I think that’s simplifying things a bit overmuch, Buffy,” Giles said. “The First Evil wasn’t trying to drive Angel crazy. It was trying to drive him into specific actions. Didn’t you say he had tried to attack you?”

   “He’d said he wanted to attack me,” Buffy said. “That it was throwing all these memories at him, making him feel guilt for the people he’d killed, tempting him to – to lose his soul in me,” she said, the last in a very small voice.

   “When was this?” Spike asked.  

   “98,” Buffy said. “Then it tried to drive him to kill himself.”

   “Wait, didn’t you say it put you in Angel’s dreams?” Willow asked. “That the two of you were sharing memories, and, like–”

   Buffy flushed and looked down. “That’s not really important,” she said. “What’s important is what the Bringers are doing here  _ now _ .”

   “How did you even figure this out, Spike?” Xander asked.

   “An old mate of mine gave me a lead, offered me some brass if I brought one of the buggers down,” Spike said. This was sounding remarkably familiar to Willow....

   “Wait, you get paid for taking down the bad guys?” Xander asked.

   “Sometimes.” Spike grinned. “One of the benefits of this not being a sacred calling is that I can refuse jobs. Which is why I can demand payment. But I didn’t know how big bad these jobbos were, or I’d have told Buffy ‘fore this.”

   “What made you tell Buffy?” Giles asked evenly.

   Spike shrugged and looked down. “I’m not…. I don’t….” He sighed and shook his head. “Needed to know if it was the right thing to do or not, so I asked, all right?”

   “Needed to know if it was the right thing, huh?” Jenny sounded skeptical. “More like he needed to make sure he could keep getting into Buffy’s pants. What do you think he did with that Bringer, anyway, hmm?”

   That was a very good question. Willow narrowed her eyes and asked, “What exactly is it that you did? It couldn’t have been something good, or you would have  _ known _ wouldn’t you?”

   “Good, bad, yeah, I can tell. Gray is sort of… grayish.” Spike shrugged again. “I took ‘im to the guy what offered the pay, then buggered off with the dosh. Thought it might be a bit fishy, so I asked the slayer about it.”

   “Convenient, don’t you think?” Jenny said. “He’s doing all of this and working himself closer and closer into the group now that you’re off magic. He’s never much cared for the idea of you using truth spells on him. I wonder what he’s hiding?” Jenny circled towards the vampire, peering at his head as if she could look inside and find all his secrets. Willow’s fingers practically itched with the urge to cast a spell, use magic to crack open Spike’s skull and paw through the nutty goodness.

“You had caught one of these Bringers?” Giles asked, sounding exasperated. “Actually  _ caught _ one?” 

“I found one of their blades before, yonks ago. Wicked sharp. So I knew they’d at least been lurking out near the south side.” 

    “ _ Found _ one of their blades?”

    Spike didn’t prevaricate at Giles’s question. “Yes, lodged in the sternum of another demon mate of mine, who from that time on no longer lived in that area of the sewers. Must have stumbled upon ‘em and they didn’t take kindly to the interruption.”

    “No doubt he rifled the body for loose change, too,” Jenny said, and Willow tried not to laugh. 

    “I forgot all about ‘em what with Dawn and all, but after Teeth got on me  _ again _ last week, I figured it was time to do some real investigating. Some of my demon pals had started moving out of the sewers. Didn’t feel comfortable, they said. So I triangulated based on that, and found three of the buggers chanting. They’d stored up a fearsome pile of weaponry. Can’t think what for. I ended up killing one of the blighters, one hightailed it out of there, and the third I persuaded to come visit my contact, just as I’d been asked.” 

    “Persuaded?”

    “I think we can all be forgiving of Spike for not offering tea and cookies to a Harbinger of the First,” Buffy said pointedly. “But I do wish you’d taken it to us, Spike. We could have found out what its plan was.”

    “I don’t think you could have found out bugger all,” Spike said. “Blighter’d had its tongue ripped out. The chanting was apparently of the tongueless, moaning variety.”

“When Spike told me this afternoon, we went back there,” Buffy said. She held up a hand. “There wasn’t time to confer, we were careful. But the body had been taken, and the place where they’d been chanting had been cleansed with fire. The one that got away apparently meant business.”

“I’m thinking I can go back to my contact,” Spike said. “See if he found out anything, but he’s not the most pleasant of fellows, and I think he might have moved house again. He does that a lot, particularly after he gets what he wants.”

“He won’t find out anything from Rack,” Jenny told Willow. “Why bother wasting his time? It’ll only bring his attention here, and… we don’t want Rack’s attention here, do we?”

“I don’t think you should bother,” Willow said. “If he’s that unpleasant, it’s not like he’s going to help us, is he?”

“Likely not,” Spike agreed.

“So we are left with nothing more than speculation,” Giles said, sounding frustrated. “Did we ever discover exactly what it was that the First Evil  _ wanted _ from Angel?” 

Buffy shook her head. “I don’t know. It claimed it was the force that had brought him back from hell.”

“Why the hell would the primal force of Evil want Angel back on this planet?” Xander asked. 

“I think you just answered your own question there, mate,” Spike said. “Angel’s not the sweetest of characters, when you get down to the meat of him.”

“You’re one to talk,” Xander said. 

“Indeed I am,” Spike said. “Think about this, Harris. If  _ I’m _ fairly sure the forces of Evil are strengthened by having Angel here, there’s probably a reason or two for that.”

“But they’re not after Angel now,” Willow said. “So who are they after?” 

There was a moment of eerie silence, and then every single eye in the room turned to Spike. 

“What are you looking at me for?”

“You’re f… uh, well, with Buffy,” Xander said. “Vampire, dating Buffy. Sounds like something Evil would be really keen on.”

“I’m not going to go betraying my slayer!” 

“Since when is Buffy  _ your _ slayer?” Xander asked. 

“Xander, it’s an endearment, let it go,” Buffy snapped. Then she turned back to Spike. “But he’s not wrong. The First was after a betrayal. It wanted Angel to-to come to me, and… it made its point very clear about what it wanted Angel to do.”

“Kill you.”

“And, um. A few other things,” Buffy said. “Which Angel wasn’t going to do, he said he’d kill himself first, and–”

“Are you telling me this thing half persuaded Angel to rape you so he wouldn’t have to deal with his soul any more?” 

Buffy went white, and glanced at the rest of the Scoobies. “We’ll talk about this later,” she said low. 

Spike’s fist was clenched, and there was tension harsh in the air, so it probably wasn’t the best time for a hurried knock to sound on the door. Everyone turned to stare at it for a moment, and before Willow even had time to get up to get it, it slammed open and in burst, of all people, Riley Finn, Buffy’s  _ other _ ex-boyfriend. The black-clad soldier stared in flustered bewilderment at the meeting, and then he turned to Buffy. 

   “There’s no time to explain. I have a demon I need to chase, lives are in danger, and I need the best. Buffy Summers? I need you.” He held out his hand in a noble plea, just ready for Buffy to take it, drop everything, and run off with him into the night. 

And the only thing that happened was that Spike burst into unrestrained laughter. 

 

 


	39. Soldier

“How long did you practice that little speech, soldier boy?” Spike asked, with that scathing look on his face that Riley always wanted to punch. “Say it over and over again in the car, paring it down to the essentials, so it sounds just like a line out of Dick Tracy?”

Riley shook his head. “I don’t have time for this. Buffy, I need you. Are you with me?”

Buffy shook her head. “If you had time to go out of your way to come pick me up, you clearly have time to take two minutes to explain.”

Riley was surprised. He’d expected Buffy to come racing outside, like she would have done last year, excited at the prospect of a mission. He’d had the whole thing plotted out. If she wasn’t home, he’d ask Joyce or whoever for where she’d be. Then he’d track her down. He’d explain in the car. He even had an outfit for her, high-tech kevlar, a gift she could change into, get her out of whatever halter-top she was playing around in, and make her his again. His partner, that is. Professional. Now here she was saying that what he was saying clearly wasn’t true? “What?”

“Well, what if you’d got caught in traffic?” Buffy said. “There’s no shouting and screaming outside this instant, so whatever’s so urgent you had time to come get me. So start explaining.”

Riley sighed, trying to figure out the best way of putting this. He’d hoped to get Buffy alone before he had to try and spell it all out for her, but–

“You’re wasting precious time,” Buffy pointed out.

Riley felt at such a loss, he pulled out his demon tracker for something to do with his hands. There was the suvolte they’d tagged, ranging somewhere by the dam probably. The things liked water. “I haven’t slept in two days,” he said, trying to get back to the speech he’d prepared. “There’s a demon, made it here to Sunnydale to spawn. We have to take it out, and take it out quick.”

“Spawn?”

Riley nodded. “Suvolte demon. Deadly. Rare. Nearly extinct, but not nearly enough. We’ve been tear-gassing through every jungle from Paraguay up, taking out nests. As soon as we put one Suvolte down, a dozen take its place. They're breeders, Buffy. One turns into ten, ten becomes a hundred. This gets out of hand and there's a war with humans? Humans are gonna lose.”

“Bollocks,” Spike said quietly.

Riley glared at him. “Wasn’t really asking for your opinion, evil-undead.”

“Wasn’t really asking for your presence, officious-berk,” Spike said. “If it breeds that fast, there’s no reason for it to be nearly extinct, so your whole premise is off. There’s no way a suvolte or whatever it is came up here from Paraguay, trotted gleefully past L.A., and didn’t raise a ruckus. These things intelligent?”

“Bestial.”

“Then someone had to have brought it here. Can they only breed with assistance, is that it?”

Riley didn’t actually know enough about the demon to know if that was the case.

“If it’s here to spawn, then someone _ let  _ it get loose, probably on purpose,” Spike pointed out.

“We know,” Riley glared. He hadn’t planned on getting into  _ this _ part of the plan until after he and Buffy had tracked down the demon. Demon tracking was exciting, thrilling, it formed bonds, reasserted attachments, made soldiers into teams. It brought people together. Hashing out espionage and intrigue only dragged people apart. “There’s a dealer in town calls himself, uh, the-the Doctor.”

“We killed him,” Spike said succinctly.

“What?” Buffy asked.

“Old demon nasty with a pretty face atop one very Glorific tower?” Spike said. “That was Doc.”

“This isn’t a demon!” Riley said, exasperated. “This is a man we know wants to sell the suvolte eggs on the black market. You could never train them, but drop a few on a populated area? Could clean them out.”

Buffy rubbed her eyes, looking tired, and to Riley’s horror, Spike came up behind her and put his arm around her, pulling her against his chest. “How much danger is anyone in  _ this minute _ ?” Buffy asked, just  _ letting  _ that vampire fondle her.

Riley couldn’t speak for a second. “What are you doing?”

“We  _ were _ in the middle of a meeting,” Buffy said, not seeming to even notice Spike was all over her. “Kind of potential apocalypse level. Is this thing susceptible to guns?”

“High powered enough round,” Riley admitted.

“And you’ve got those?” Buffy asked, and Riley nodded.

“Then I think you’re probably fine. You’ve got your nifty little tracker, just shoot the thing.”

“I don’t want to shoot the thing, I want to track it! Find out where its nest is, and make sure to take out the eggs.”

“Then do that,” Buffy said. “And when you find it, use that pretty little bomb-egg thing on your belt and take out the whole set. That  _ would _ kill them, right?”

“But it’s dangerous,” Riley said. “I’m not dumb enough to go hunting demons alone.”

“So why didn’t you bring your team? Why the hell  _ are _ you here alone, that doesn’t even follow,” Buffy said.

Sam had said much the same thing. He’d had to pull rank to get here alone.

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Kind of busy here. But if you really need back up – Xander?”

Xander raised his hand.

“Can you go with Riley? You can hold his nifty gadgets or something. Willow, you go with him. You know computers.”

This was not at  _ all _ how Riley had expected this to go. “I need soldiers, Buffy. I need you.”

“Well… you don’t have me.”

“Never really did, you two-bit ponce,” Spike said with a sinister grin. Buffy looked uncomfortable at that.

Rage flared in him. “Is there something going on between you two? Something I should know?” he demanded.

“I don’t see why,” Buffy said. “You were the one who left. You don’t really need to know anything about what’s happening here.”

“I think I can see pretty clearly,” Riley said. “You’ve finally found a man strong enough for you. But it’s not a man. It’s this evil thing I should have dusted a long time ago, and–”

“Riley,” Buffy said quietly. “I think you should go.”

Spike was still pawing at Buffy like a hungry octopus, and Buffy was looking more and more uncomfortable. Particularly when Spike opened his mouth again, and said, “You know, this actually is a little bit delicious. Must sting a bit, eh? Me, and your former? What can I say? Girl just needs a little monster in her man.”

“Spike, shut up,” Buffy muttered.

But Spike only slid his hand down Buffy’s arm with a wicked grin. “You know, she always had a bit of a thing for me, even when she was still shagging you. Had to have known that, mate.”

“Spike,” Buffy said through clenched teeth. “Evil.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “No way. No way does this fall under evil, pet. Can’t possibly go any deeper than mean-spirited, and the ponce deserves it! You know he does.”

“Yeah,” Buffy said, pulling away. “But I don’t.”

Spike’s fist clenched, and he glared at Riley, but he didn’t challenge.

“Will you just… go outside,” Buffy said, like she was talking to an errant puppy.

Even Spike heard the tone. “Should I tuck my tail between my legs before I go, slayer?” he said, sounding nasty. “Or is there something there already you don’t want mucked up?”

“Spike!”

With a demonic growl Spike actually turned and walked away, banging out the kitchen door. Riley relaxed, expecting Buffy to go back to normal now. “You’re not really doing anything with that idiot, are you?” he asked. It had to be a deranged fantasy of the deluded vampire.

“I’m sleeping with him,” Buffy said evenly.

Riley had been hoping for  _ any _ other explanation. “Buffy, he’s evil! And he’s stupid, and he’s–”

“Honest,” Buffy said. “And he respects me. Like, if he’d had any kind of vicious demon he needed my help to track down, he wouldn’t have shown up at my door and snapped his fingers like I was some dog who would come running to his side. He probably would have used some of that exciting technology to, oh, I don’t know, call first.”

It felt like he’d been slapped. This was not at all how he’d expected this meeting to go. He was going to recruit the slayer. He’d  _ planned _ for it. And to damn him even further, his cell phone chose that moment to go off again. Buffy raised her eyebrow at the beeping, and Riley hurriedly pulled it out and turned it off, hanging up on Sam again.  _ So _ not the time to bring up the new wife now.

“I do respect you, Buffy,” Riley said. “That’s why I came to recruit you for this. You’re the first woman I ever…” He’d been planning saying this for months, certainly since he’d planted the rumors that Sunnydale was the best place for an American dropoff in the hopes that the dealer would make his trade here.  _ You’re the first woman I ever loved, Buffy _ . It sounded so romantic and sincere. And… now it just didn’t seem to fit the hard-faced woman who was staring at him with eyes that looked so much older than he’d remembered. “The strongest woman I’ve ever known,” he finished up, because at least that was still true.

“Is that why you cheated on me?” she asked.

“What?”

“Is that why you cheated on me? Is that why you left? Because I was strong?”

Riley grunted out an exasperated sigh. She’d never understood. “You didn’t need me, Buffy.”

“Didn’t I?” Buffy asked. “My mom died. Dawn died. I died. The world nearly ended, and you were gone.” She advanced on him, and Riley found himself taking a step back. “Do you know who was here to help? Spike. With no demands that I put aside my sick mother and everything else to make him feel needed. With no expectation that I was ever going to love him. And without constantly undermining my every decision.” She stopped advancing and held her head up. God, how could such a little woman look so damn  _ big _ ?  

“You have three choices, Riley. Either find this demon you’re so convinced is such a threat with Willow and Xander to help you hold your little gizmos, or find it all by yourself. Or, third choice, give me what info you’ve got, clear out, and leave me to it. And the next time you think you  _ need me _ , call first. This is my territory. Hell, this is my  _ house _ , even a vampire would have waited for a goddamn invite!”

Why the hell was she so mad? “I didn’t do anything wrong, here, Buffy,” Riley said. “I’m just trying to make the world a safer place.”

“By fucking your students and cheating on your girlfriend with two-bit-vampire-trulls,” Buffy spat. She sounded like Spike. Like,  _ exactly _ like Spike, how much time had she been spending with that idiot? “Now get the fuck out of here, before I get tetchy.”

She turned around to storm off, leaving Riley feeling bewildered. But before he could gather his wits and face the other Scoobies, who had all been watching the exchange with unabashed interest, Buffy turned around again. “And you know what the big joke is, Riley?” she said. “I  _ did _ love you. Meant it the whole time. You don’t get to claim I didn’t. I didn’t fuck up our relationship,  _ you _ did. Just wanted to say that.  _ Now _ you can fuck off.”

And this time she really did storm off, slamming the kitchen door just like Spike.

Riley stood helpless for a second, and finally said the only thing he could think of. He looked over at Willow – god, she was sight for sore eyes, Willow. “Joyce is dead?” he asked.

“It’s been a long year,” Willow told him.

***

“You off to play tin soldiers with Captain America?” Spike muttered as Buffy came out the back door.

  He’d scooped up a handful of pebbles while waiting about like her loyal doggy. Now he threw one at the nearest tree. Finn and Buffy, off on a demon hunt together, just like old sodding times. He’d sweep her off her feet all over again, because wasn’t that always the way? Some tall, broad neanderthal of a bloke would come to take away whatever he cared about.

“I told him to fuck off,” Buffy said, and Spike closed his eyes. “Which you would have been there for if you hadn’t been trying to basically pee all over me in front of Riley.”

  He opened his mouth to protest that it hadn’t been like that, except it sort of had been. He’d wanted Finn to know that he’d lost Buffy. That she was with him now. Because… well, because, sod it all, but he’d been afraid. Buffy had poured her life into that berk, giving him far more chances than even made sense, and for all his casual dismissal of the relationship, Spike knew it had been real.

  Yeah, he and Buffy had always had something (whatever it was) even when Finn was still in the picture. But Soldier Boy had given her something Spike never would be able to, a kind of reliable good-intention which Spike just didn’t feel capable of. It was like those Dungeons and Dragons things Xander was so hung up on, which the niblet had unsuccessfully been trying to drag Spike into.

  He had only glanced at the books a couple times for Dawn’s sake, but one of the things he’d seen was a chart on good and evil. Riley fell under Lawful Good, even if the damn laws made no sense and hurt people. Spike was clearly Chaotic Evil. Maybe Chaotic Neutral at times since if there was something good on the telly, he’d likely pick that over evil for the sake of evil. When he’d said something like that to Dawn, she’d laughed. He was pretty sure Buffy wouldn’t laugh about that now. More or less neutral was still too close to evil for someone like her.

Buffy was Chaotic Good. He loved that about her.

“What about his ever-so-pressing, no-time-to-explain demon hunt?”

“We both found time to explain,” Buffy said. “I don’t think it’s so pressing as he made it sound. If it was, he’d have brought his team.”

Spike debated round and round and  _ round _ again for whether or not he should mention it.  _ Yes, mention it _ , he said.  _ Stop being so afraid she’ll hate you for what you are. _

“I think I might actually have heard this was going down,” he confessed. “There was a job floating about a few months ago, someone needing a safe stash for a clutch of demon eggs.”

“Who needed it?”

“I heard it through a middleman,” he said. “Don’t know the bloke direct.”

“Who was the middleman?”

“Warlock. Same guy wanted the Bringer, actually.”

“Any chance the two are connected?”

“I’d be surprised,” he said. “Rack’s a guy who has his fingers in everything.” He didn’t want to get into the details around the rest of the Scoobies, but Buffy could know. “Kind of a magical mob boss, deep into the Big Bad around here.”

“You work for him?”

“We have mutual respect,” Spike said. “But no, I’m not his lap dog. Strict big bad for hire, and only if I like the taste of the job. I don’t trust Rack.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“Ask Tara. Or some of the other witches. Hell, even Red might know ‘im, if she’s playing close to the vest. I don’t know what she tapped to bring you back. But Rack’s into everything. And he’s heard of  _ you _ ,” Spike told her. “He most wants to stay out of your way.”

Buffy nodded. “Fair enough.”

He closed his eyes as he added, “If I hadn’t had the niblet, I might have taken the job.”

“What?”

“Safe stash for demon eggs. Sounded like easy money.” Enough to keep him in blood, smokes, and booze, plus extra for a gift or something for Buffy.

She sighed heavily after a moment of thinking it over. “You know how deadly they were?”

“Probably wouldn’t have thought to ask,” he confessed.

“Because what does it matter when you’re evil,” Buffy muttered.

She hugged herself and looked up at the sky, and he could tell the confession had made her uncomfortable, though he couldn’t entirely fathom  _ why _ . Not asking was more careless than strictly evil, wasn’t it? Not that it mattered either way. The fact that she was uncomfortable made  _ him _ feel uncomfortable, and… god, trying to graft on a conscience was  _ work _ . Even if it  _ was _ hers, and even if it  _ did _ carry with it certain perks.

Perks which Buffy was not open to supplying at the moment, as demonstrated when he reached for her hand, and she didn’t give it. He rubbed his head awkwardly after his hand just hung there for a second, trying not to feel rejected. Damn it, he was  _ trying _ , couldn’t she just…?

“What’s with this First Evil thing?” he asked abruptly, changing the subject. “What was it you were dancing around in there?”

“Nothing. It’s complicated.”

“It’s about Angel.”

“That’s not important!”

Spike glared at her. “Yeah, Buffy. It is. If this thing nearly got Angel to betray you, when you were all love-everlasting, that’s a big deal. Is this thing why Angel left? Is this how he broke your heart?”

“No,” Buffy said. “We weren’t even  _ together _ when the First approached Angel.”

He shook his head. “I don’t follow.”

“Angel and I… I kinda… broke up with him after you came back to Sunnydale. I mean, we weren’t dating, but you were right. We weren’t just friends.” She looked at the ground. “We’d never been friends. And I decided after you’d pointed that out that… I had to be done with him. And it worked for a while, he was out of my life, and then I started having these dreams… I was called into  _ his _ dreams.”

“And let me guess,” Spike said. “These dreams weren’t exactly of the G-rated pat-you-on-the-head variety.”

“No. A hard R, easy.”

Just an R? Sounded like Angel was still a crap lay, even in his sleep. Which, yeah, made sense. How you shagged seemed like it would be an intrinsic thing built into a person, not something connected to the soul. The times Spike had found himself in Angelus’s bed, it hadn’t been much more than a hump and a poke centered around the older vampire’s pleasure. He was pretty sure Buffy didn’t want to know anything about that, though, so he just stayed quiet while she told him about the First’s visit to good old Sunnyhell.

The whole thing seemed a bit off from the get go. Her insistence that a miracle occurred that Christmas morning, and that God or the Powers That Be themselves had intervened for good, thus saving Angel’s life by making it snow, sounded like one of the biggest disconnects he’d ever heard.

“Hang on a tick,” he said. “So, you break up with Angel. Get him out of your life. And then a force that admits it’s pure evil gets into his head and tries to convince him to rape or kill you.”

“He wouldn’t have raped me, I mean… I loved him.” She looked down. “Wouldn’t have had to rape me.”

“Would you have wanted to say yes, knowing about the whole soul thing?”

“Well… no,” Buffy said. “But… I’m weak sometimes.”

“So, if he had  _ pressed _ you after you said no, you might have given in?” Spike growled under his breath. “Yeah. Sounds like a real good guy.”

She glared. “I already told you, I know Angel wasn’t good, okay?”

“But you’ve still got it in your head that it was God his blessed-buggering self who wanted you and him together, even with a purely evil force date-raping you in your sleep!”

Buffy went pale, and he could tell she’d never thought of it that way before. He felt like a right berk for making her see it that way, but she needed to. “It wasn’t like that. The First Evil wanted him to kill himself.”

“No, you said yourself, the First Evil wanted him with you. Opened up hell to bring him back, got him all tense, and you all hot and bothered with these dreams of yours, and when he broke and tried to take the coward’s way out–”

“Hey!”

“I can say it, I’ve been there!” Spike snapped. So had she, but that was another thing he wouldn’t be mentioning. “When he tried to take the coward’s way out, you say the Powers intervened and saved his life. Sounds to me like this damned Evil force intervened, and made it snow, killing off all the crops around here, so it could get you and Angel together and feed its own Evil agenda! Whatever the hell that was.”

Buffy looked stricken. Then she glared. “It never tried to get Angel to kill me again.”

“But it got you all snuggly and lovey-dovey, didn’t it?” Spike demanded. “Baby steps, love. ‘Sides, you said you’d killed its Bringers. Likely couldn’t manifest again without ‘em.”

“So you’re saying Angel and I only started dating again because of the First Evil?”

“Sounds like Angel’s bestest ever pal to me!”

“That doesn’t make sense, why would it want  _ that _ ?”

It was pretty clear to Spike. “So that he could keep hurting you.”

“But he didn’t. He left so he wouldn’t.”

“Oh, please. Like he hasn’t been touching  _ just _ enough to keep you hooked on him.”

“I’m not that big a dupe!”

“Sorry, love, but yeah, you are.”

“Excuse me?”

“When it comes to Angel, you have been the biggest dupe in a century! And I can’t even blame you for it, ‘cause I know just what tricks he pulled on you.”

“He didn’t pull tricks!”

“I know he did, ‘cause he taught them to me!” Spike roared.

He felt bad about it at the look on her face. He didn’t finish up with what he’d meant to say, which was that he also spent six months listening to him boast about them – the stalking and the mysterious cryptic messages and the goddamn-lamest-ever “you look cold!” technique so he could show off his injuries. It wouldn’t have worked on a grown woman, but a sixteen year old girl? Bloody disgusting is what it was.

And Spike had pulled the same tricks himself, at times. But not on Buffy. Never, ever on anyone he actually cared about.

Spike lowered his head, panting with both fury and… that feeling he’d come to name as shame, which he’d never bloody felt before he took on Buffy. “Look,” he said. He reached out for her hands. “I’m scared, all right? I got enough evil forces trying to bollix up my head, I don’t need–”

Buffy pulled away, not letting him touch her, and the rage flared again. She did this sometimes, but why bloody  _ now _ with the shadow of Angel hanging over their heads, and Riley-bloody-Finn still haunting the goddamn  _ house _ . He was turning himself inside out for her, and she couldn’t even let him hold her bloody hand! Even though he’d just told her he was scared, and she knew how much touch meant to him. “Buffy!”

“I’m pissed off at you, okay?” she said bluntly. “I didn’t need you flaunting this in front of  _ Riley _ , in the ugliest, grossest way possible.”

“Finn is an ass!” he growled, stung by her words.

“I know he is, but it still hurts,” Buffy yelled back. “And now he thinks he was all justified in cheating on me, because he thinks I was cheating on him, with  _ you _ !”

“Well, you weren’t, I would have remembered,” he snapped.

“You hinted we were!” she barked.

“Like he would have believed me,” Spike snarled.

“Like he didn’t already feel I was a freak,” Buffy growled.

Spike grabbed her by the front of her shirt and yanked her forward, and they were panting into each other’s faces like the pair of bad dogs they were. “Like there’s anything wrong with being a freak.”

They kissed hard and fierce, almost a bite, the passion quite mutual before Buffy pushed him off, still fighting. “I get you’re scared, but you’re not being haunted, right?”

“Not yet,” Spike said. “But you all glared at me in there like I was.”

“Well, history has a way of repeating itself.”

“Just ‘cause you have a thing for vampires–”

“I do not have a  _ thing _ ,” Buffy snapped.

He stopped himself from saying he was the one with the thing. “Buffy, if that creature can tempt Angel into ultimate evil even  _ with _ the bloody soul, what chance would I have?” He gestured at the house. “Especially if you all think I’m already there.”

“Tell us if you start being haunted,” Buffy said. “Tell us if you start having dreams about wanting to kill me. Just  _ tell us. _ ”

Spike looked at her very seriously. “I always dream about wanting to kill you,” he said. “Always.”

Buffy considered this. “Have they been any different from normal, lately?”

He shook his head, no.

“Then I’m not worried. I don’t know what the damn First Evil would be after this time, okay? It might be you, it might not.”

“It wanted Angel to hurt you. Or kill you.” Spike shook his head. “This has to be about you.  _ Breaking _ you somehow.”

Buffy frowned thoughtfully. “It did seem to want something deeper than just dead. Something fundamental, a betrayal or something.” She shook her head. “We’re gonna have to table it. In the meantime, I’m gonna go get Tara, see if she can find this… demon thing Riley’s after.”

“You’re going after it with him?”

“I didn’t say  _ with  _ him. Regardless of whether or not he handled this right, if there’s a man-eating demon running around Sunnydale, we can’t just let that happen.”

“Why not?” Spike snapped, knowing full well why not even if he didn’t give a toss one way or the other himself.

Buffy just looked at him. 

“Fine, whatever.” He threw his hands up in defeat and turned away from her. “I’ll just head back to my crypt and get out of your shiny hair, then.” 

“Unless you know where this demon is stashed?”

     “And step all over Mr. Wonderful’s polished hobnails? No thank you. You can go run off with Captain Cardboard and his beigemobile. I’m staying out of this one. You should, too.”

Spike already knew what would happen if Riley took it into his head to stake him. He’d had that visual, in vivid technicolor and full surround sound, and still had a bit of a scar over his heart to prove it – about half an inch from the smaller one Buffy left when she’d found out about Dawn. He didn’t mention that, though. It just wasn’t the time.

“I’m just going to go talk to Tara.” She paused. “You can come if you want.”

He knew that look. She didn’t actually want him there. She liked having time alone to hunt, and she was still pissed at him. “Just don’t trust the sod,” Spike muttered.

“About demon fighting, he’s fine,” Buffy said. “And you know it. Besides, I’m not working with him. I just want to make sure everyone’s safe.”

“If he didn’t let the damn demon loose himself in an attempt to get into your knickers.”

“Riley wouldn’t do that. I don’t think,” Buffy said, not sounding at all sure. “He’s not perfect, but he’s not  _ that _ bad. I don’t know what you have against him.”

“Hello!” Spike said, pointing at his head with two stiff fingers. Several other things as well, but that was between him and Finn, not dirty laundry he was going to air for sympathy.

“Do you really hate that thing that much?” Buffy asked. “Be honest, would you have slowed down on the blood-lust long enough to get to know me if you didn’t have it?”

He knew the answer to that was no. He didn’t  _ like _ it, though. “He doesn’t respect you.”

“Look, he was a crappy boyfriend, but it’s not like he’s a killer. Now go home.”

Spike refrained from saying killers could make damn good boyfriends. He figured he was in a big enough hole already. He hadn’t even  _ done _ anything! “Want one more chance for a goodbye shag with the soldier boy?”

Buffy’s smirk was barely even annoyed. “If you thought that, you wouldn’t even be saying it.”

He looked down. He couldn’t help it, it was a weak spot in him. “If you do, don’t tell me,” he said quietly.

Buffy came up and touched his cheek, and for the first time since she came outside, she looked really there with him. “Hey,” she said, very serious. “One.”

Spike closed his eyes. He knew she wasn’t like that. She knew he knew that. But it was what he’d been built to expect, and she knew that, too.   


He tilted his head and kissed her palm, and she smiled at him, meaning it. Then the softness fell out of her face, and she gave him a little push. “Now, go home.”

He glared. “I don’t like this.”

“I don’t like this, either.”

“I really hate you,” Spike snarled.

“I hate you, back.”

They kissed, brief, hard, desperate, fierce as a blow.

“Still pissed at you,” Buffy said when they broke.

“Back at you.”

“Later.”

Spike had already turned to go, but he waved his hand behind him.

He could almost hear her shaking her head in exasperation as she went back into the house. He went back to the crypt, grumbling his fury under his breath. They had fights like this all the bloody time.

The crypt door creaked as he opened it. Someone complained loudly out of the darkness, likely about how he was late getting home. Spike smiled. At least  _ someone _ wanted him around.

“Hey, kitten,” he said, and the other two came up at his voice. Three pairs of eyes stared at him expectantly, and three lashing tails demonstrated the emotion, and Nodd, the most vocal of the three, punctuated the demand with another meow. “You buggers hungry?”

That question was absurd. Of course they were hungry. Spike took the bag of kitten chow off the top of the fridge. The three of them stopped protesting their imminent starvation and began their usual attempt at cold-blooded murder, twining impatiently around his ankles with, he was sure, the full intention of making him fall and break his neck. Good thing that wouldn’t kill him. He poured the food into their large communal bowl and was instantly forgotten. They were good little hunters and got the kitten chow once a day, at least, but they still fell upon it like ravenous beasts. Especially the little calico.

He chuckled softly at the grunting noises she was making over her food and reached out to scratch behind her ears. The poor wee things. They seemed healthy enough, but sometimes they wandered about, crying out like they were trying to find Dawn.

“Miss your mum, don’t you?” he murmured to them. “Know how that is. But no worries. Grandpa Spike’ll be here to look after the lot of you until she….” He stopped, needing a moment before he could go on. “Until she gets back.”

Finn back in town had driven the whole sucker thing as deep into his heart as the man’s bloody plastic stake.  _ That  _ was the kind of bugger Dawn had to take into herself. He felt ill at the thought.

He abandoned the kittens and settled into his little ritual of lighting his candles, so the place would be welcoming when Buffy came over. Because she would come over. He already knew she would. Yeah, they were fighting. They were always fighting. She always came back just the same.

That was kind of the best thing about it.


	40. Sucker

****

 

 

   “New client,” Martine said, poking her head around the door of Dusk’s room.

   Dusk had two rooms now, her private and her public room. She’d insisted on it once Link had started getting more business. The private room was still the little one in the attic with the angled ceiling. The public room was on the ground floor, and used to be the dining room. Link had used it for his thugs, but Dusk had insisted that the chandelier was too nice to waste on strong-arms, and the boys would be just as happy in the basement. The private room was sacrosanct now. None were allowed to enter, not even Link. She had given permission for the public room to be used by others, so long as she had no clients that day, and whoever wanted to use it asked her first.

   Dusk looked over at Martine. She was still in her cowgirl-stripper costume, as Link was completely hung up on the things, but he’d stopped trying to dress Dusk like a naughty schoolgirl. Dusk wore long dresses now, which made her look a little older than she had been when she’d turned. She wore her hair up a lot, to show off her long neck. She had glittering gems – mostly costume jewelry, but it made a goodly show in candlelight – and a spiked dog collar.

   She didn’t know why she wanted the collar. She’d found it on a nasty Doberman type thing that had attacked her on her first foray out of the suck house. She’d slipped Spike’s coat back on, expressed her intention to go for a walk to Link, and was prepared for an argument. Link hadn’t argued. He hadn’t argued much with anything she’d wanted after she kneed him in the crotch and threatened to walk, which she had done one week after Spike’s visit. Because everything Spike had said had come true. Link  _ had _ tried to get her hooked on a few spells, he  _ had _ insisted that she allow sex – or at least some really intrusive dry humping – during the bites, and she was able to think more clearly if she didn’t look in his eyes.

   She’d gone all over Sunnydale that night, pointedly avoiding a few places – the graveyards, Revello Drive, the college campus, the Bronze. Anywhere where she thought she might run into Spike or Buffy or Tara or any of the others. She didn’t want to see them. When the dog attacked she’d killed it quickly, and even made herself take some of the blood, to remind herself that this was her kill. Then she’d taken the black leather and spikes home, scrubbed it free of most of the dog smell, and put it on.

   It was somewhat incongruous with her otherwise elegant look, but she’d wanted it. She wondered if it was a sign of her bondage or something. Not that Link kept her a prisoner, but she felt bound by something else.

   It galled her that this was what she had been reduced to. A kind of vampire whore. But she wouldn’t leave. Dusk didn’t know if it was because she was angry at Spike and Buffy, or if, at some level, she stayed because she was punishing herself. She was evil. This was where evil lived.

   But Link  _ did _ want her, and once the cattle had started asking for her by name, realizing that her bite gave a deeper, faster high, Dusk milked that advantage for all it was worth. She insisted on a bigger cut. She would only offer certain services directly to clients, for direct pay which Link had no access to. And she’d started keeping records, like Willow had taught her, eventually demanding Martine as her receptionist, so she wouldn’t have to deal with the clients unless actually doing the bite.

   “New client?” Dusk said. “Tell Link to get one of the other girls to train him, I can’t be bothered with new blood.”

   “He’s been trained,” Martine said. “Used to be a regular until he left town. He just got back. Link told him about his new princess, the guy’s real excited.”

   Dusk sat down and clipped on her earrings. “What’s he like?” she asked. She looked down at herself. The dress she was in would do, red silk. She wished, not for the first time, that she could use a mirror. Instead she turned on her camcorder and monitor. She’d snapped to the idea of the video recorder when she’d realized cameras could still see their image. It always looked a little off, just a bit skewed as the camera wasn’t in the monitor, but she could see what she looked like, anyway. The other girls were always wanting to borrow it, until Link had had to get his own set up in one of their rooms.

   “Self-righteous,” Martine said. “Really acts like he’s doing us a favor showing up at all, because we’d starve without him.”

   Dusk laughed. Yeah, the human blood was nice, but now that she was more used to it, it wasn’t all that. Spike was right. The kill was one thing, the bite was another, and actually getting enough to eat was something else entirely. She’d taken to spending her earnings on organic blood, better tasting than the cheap stuff Link supplied. She even bought goat on occasion.

   “But he pays?”

   “Oh, real well,” Martine said. “Doesn’t even ask for the other most of the time. He just wants the bite. Sometimes he’ll crawl over you if he gets high enough, but mostly he likes to lay back and feel like you’re worshiping his blood. He won’t stop you, though. Easy to take too much with him.”

   “I can handle it,” Dusk said. She was pretty sure she could. She’d only messed up once, and that was a guy so anemic his blood had tasted like rusty water. He’d gotten to the hospital in time, and the next time he came back, Dusk refused him. He was the first client Dusk had refused, but he hadn’t been the last. It had gotten to be a joke among the other suckers, that the princess had royal tastes.

   But Spike had been right. She could taste it. Diseases in the blood, heroin addicts, even just a few clients who really liked to eat garlic. Dusk reserved the right to refuse a victim for no reason at all. Link really really hated her for that little quirk.

   Dusk brushed out her hair, pinned it up, and then pulled out the accounts book.

   “He’s already waiting,” Martine reminded her.

   “That’s nice,” Dusk said. She’d learned, keep the clients waiting. If they wanted her, she wanted them to know she was worth it. She opened up a new file for her new guy, went to the accounts bracket, and entered in her regular fee, assuming Link had already gotten payment. She left the Additional Services bracket open. She’d offer things like massages and actual sex directly, and Link wouldn’t get a penny for that shit.

   She had made a tidy sum this month. Better than last month, by a lot. For the month before that, the records were sketchy, because she’d had to make them from memory. She’d only gotten the book two months ago. Even though these were fairly basic accounts, she really wished she’d paid more attention in math class. If Anya was still around, Dusk might have....

   But no. Anya wasn’t around. And Dusk wouldn’t have asked her for pointers on her financial records, anyway, because that was part of her old life, and Dusk wasn’t part of that any more.

   As she looked at the records she realized there was a glaring blank square. “Martine? Sadie didn’t come by this Tuesday, did she.”

   “Nope,” Martine said. “Heard she’d had a heart attack at work.”

   Dusk looked up, startled. “A heart attack?”

   “Yeah.”

   “Is she all right? When is she going to be back?”

   “She’s dead,” Martine said, with a bit of a giggle. “It’s okay. She brought lots of clients in her day. It was one of them told me she was off the menu.” She shrugged. “You gonna come bite this guy, or you getting on your high horse again?” Though the words were scathing, the look on Martine’s hooded face was respectful. The girls had come to admire Dusk, her strength of character, her strength of will, her... strength.

   “Yeah,” Dusk said. “I’ll be right down. Give him a glass of wine or something, on the house.”

   “Link won’t–”

   “My tab.”

   Martine rolled her eyes, but went down to play receptionist again.

   Dusk turned over pages and quietly, deliberately, closed out Sadie’s account. “Deceased” she put on it. She didn’t have photographs of her clients or anything. They went by first names, or nicknames, in case the book was ever found by the cops or something, so they couldn’t be traced. It was just words on paper. But there was Sadie, whom she had bitten and snuggled and had been cradled by, dead and gone. She’d never call Dusk her little chick, never sing her drunken lullabies. She was never coming back again.

   Dusk closed the book with a sudden snap, took one last look in the monitor to make sure her hair was good, and headed down to her bite room to meet the latest steer.

***

 

   What was with this girl?

   Riley paced back and forth in the dim little bedroom, already sick of waiting. Link had promised him this girl was worth the extra money. Some really hotshot vampire bloodline, a bite hit stronger and more potent than anything he’d ever experienced. He wasn’t so sure. He’d had some pretty impressive bites in the last year. Less often now that he was with Sam, but even though Sam needed him, there was nothing else that gave him quite the same rush as a good bite. Well, that succubus had been pretty hot, too.

   Still, why the hell was she keeping him waiting? He really  _ did _ have a demon to hunt. It wasn’t the first time he’d abandoned a demon hunt to get a good bite in, but he felt kind of bad about this one. But he just couldn’t  _ concentrate _ , with the way Buffy had attacked him! What did she want from him? He had been doing her a  _ favor _ bringing her into the mission. She fiddled about in that house with those stupid kids, and now with her favorite pet vampire. Her pet vampire who was only her pet because Riley had captured him! He’d have to point that out to her next time he saw her. That if he hadn’t neutered the bastard, she couldn’t even have kept him.

   At least he had that to console him. There was no way Buffy was getting  _ her _ bite on with that guy.

_  Unless she cuts herself, _ he realized, and shuddered. The idea of Buffy giving herself to those vampires... ugh! It was just.... But she’d been doing that all along, he knew she’d been. She was a cold little slut who was never faithful, who only liked guys with god damn  _ superpowers, _ billowy-coat-king-of-pain types, and-and-and– “Argh!” Riley punched the wall. He needed the damn bite. Where the fuck was this bitch?

   The conversation he’d had with Willow before Buffy had come back in and imperiously ordered him out of the house had been... elucidating. It had all felt like a punch in the face. He’d left really believing that Buffy didn’t need him, and she’d be just fine. But apparently Joyce had died, not even two months after he’d left. And that had been just the tip of a downward spiral that had resulted in Dawn’s kidnapping, Buffy’s death, Willow breaking her magic in resurrecting her (or something. That was as much as Riley could understand) and eventually leading to Dawn being murdered, which seemed to have thrown Buffy into the arms of  _ Spike _ of all idiotic characters.

_ Spike _ . Riley reached into his pocket. Next to the cell phone was a little black box, something he’d been sure to demand from the government before he headed back to Sunnydale. The inhibition chip’s remote control. 

The chip’s actual function wasn’t to turn vampires into “harmless little bunnies” as Buffy had put it. (Was that what she thought of him? A bunny? She was already calling him cute little pet names when she claimed she hated him!) Its actual purpose was to make vampires safe to use in combat, which meant it had to be possible to turn it off so they could fight. Once Buffy had made her position on Spike clear, Riley had decided to allow the hostile to continue on in his neutered existence, but he’d only done that for her sake. Now… well, if Buffy had no plans to take him back, what was he still doing things for  _ her _ sake for?

Maybe it was time to take the fucker out. He had two options. The harsh, visceral reality of a stake, or this. He wouldn’t even have to approach the hostile with this thing. Line of sight would do it. He should have done it before, should have  _ actually _ killed the bastard, shouldn’t have bothered with just the plastic stake before he’d left.

_    Before he’d left _ . Willow said Buffy had cried. Over and over again just after Riley had gone. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe she  _ had _ loved him. She’d loved him, and he’d... he’d....

   Where was this dead girl? He’d paid good money for a bite, dammit, and no amount of cheap wine was going to mollify him. He grunted and turned to the door, planning to go out and complain to Link, but even as he turned, the door was filled by an elegant shadow, a silhouette of a beautifully slender girl in a long dress, her hair up, her hand out. 

   “About time,” he snapped. He turned and drank down the wine he’d been given like it was water. He shrugged off his shirt. “I’d like to get on with this. I have places to be.”

   The vampire said nothing. She just stood there, frozen in the doorway, backlit, her hand on the doorjamb. Riley glared. What was all of this? He was used to girls who were properly grateful that he was here, giving them what they  _ needed _ to survive. 

   “I said, let’s get on with this! I like it hard, on the arm, usually, with you kind of leaning over me. And you’d better be worth it, Link swore by you.” 

   He lay down on the bed under the chandelier, waiting for her to come over to him. Slinking and contrite. But a crunching, splintering sound came from the doorway as a piece of the doorjamb came off in the girl’s hand. He was about to say something when she finally stepped into the dim room, and he could see her clearly for the first time.

  “Dawn?” No. No, it couldn’t be. There was a split second of shame at the thought of her seeing him there before his worry and horror took over. He was off the bed in a heartbeat, leaping for her. 

   “Oh, god, Dawn, kid, we gotta get you out of here,” he said, grabbing for her shoulders. Jesus, he hadn’t thought Link was this kind of evil. These vamps were just tame ferrets, compared to the trash out on the streets. Well, apparently not. He’d dust them, that was the only way. Every one of them. Well... maybe he’d let Martine live. She was good at what she did. “Have they been keeping you prisoner? It’s okay, I can make a stake. Even if they fight us, I can – god, Buffy thinks you’re dead! How long have they been holding you here? Have they been feeding...? Hospital. We’ll get you to the hospital, we just gotta–”

   His hand was smacked away by a cool arm, much stronger than he’d been anticipating. And why wasn’t Dawn crying and begging him for help? And why did she look so healthy, if she’d been a prisoner here in this suck house full of teenage vampire chicks...?

   She looked awfully pale.

   The realization crept over him like a cold frost, inching up his spine and landing in his mouth, like the taste of blood. “Oh, god, Dawn. How did this happen?”

“The usual way.” Dawn’s head tilted, and she stared at him. “What are you doing back?”

“There was a demon. I came to recruit Buffy, long story.”

“You came back for Buffy?”

“Well, sort of,” Riley said. “Of course, I found her sleeping with the evil-undead. Should have known she’d submit to that idiot.” He couldn’t keep the raw contempt out of his voice. 

    “Submit?” she asked. Her voice didn’t sound like hers, small and kind of sad. It wasn’t her jokey, sassy voice, either. There was something cold and dead about it, which made sense now he thought about it. “Did you just say  _ submit _ ?” 

“Well, girl’s in Spike’s bed, what else would you call it?” Thinking about it made him sick. Buffy under Spike, the vampire having his way with her. Disgusting.

    Dawn was looking at him very strangely. “That’s what you call it?” She took a step forward, and her voice, though deadly, sounded very calm. “My sister’s final acceptance of the devoted love of my awesome sire, and you call it nothing more than  _ submission?” _

    Riley really only caught one word of that. “Your  _ sire _ ?”

    She wasn’t listening, either. “ _ Submission _ ?”

    “ _ Spike _ did this to you?” Riley found himself shouting. “Good god. I should have staked him for real, I should never have let the bastard live.” He dove for the remote. “It’s all right, Dawn, I’ll make up for it. For you, for Buffy, I should have done this ages ago.”

    “What?” 

    “He can’t run, all I have to do is see him, and the remote’ll take him out.”

    Dawn was staring at him. “Take him out?” 

    “Yeah.”

    “You want to kill Spike?” Dawn said. “You’re going to kill Spike.”

    “Well… what he’s doing to Buffy, what he did to you. I’ll terminate him with the chip, it’ll be all right, Dawn–” And suddenly he realized it wasn’t going to be all right. Even if he  _ did _ take out Spike, there was no bringing Dawnie back. She was dead, all because of that  _ thing _ he should have put down. “Oh, god, Dawn. I’m sorry.”

   Dawn’s face was hard as steel. “You’re sorry?” she whispered. “ _ Now _ you’re sorry?” She grabbed him in both cool hands and shoved him back across the room. He hit the wall. It kind of hurt. “Sorry for what, exactly? Sorry for leaving without saying goodbye? Sorry for breaking Buffy’s heart? Or sorry for running around behind her back with a bunch of suckers?”

   Riley wasn’t sure why she sounded so angry. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

   “Not sorry enough to call and check,” Dawn said. “Buffy checked the mail. Every day. Not even a birthday card.”

   “What does that have to do with anything?” Riley asked, really confused now.

   “Buffy thought you cared about her,” Dawn said. “You know what? I thought you did too. I even thought you cared about me.”

   “I did care about you, Dawnie,” he said. “I made sure you were all right when your mom was sick, didn’t I?”

   “Mom died!” Dawn yelled at him.

   Riley cringed. “Yeah. Yeah, I just heard.”

   “I was nearly killed by a hellgod,” Dawn snapped. “Buffy flung herself to her  _ death _ .”

   “I know,” Riley said. “I heard.”

   “Then I was murdered by vampires!” Dawn shouted at him. Some shuffling in the hallway made Riley glance behind her. The other suckers had heard the ruckus, and they were staring openly.

   There was something fundamentally different between the girls in the doorway and Dawn. Maybe it was because they all wore their hooded faces. Maybe part of it was that they were all dressed like strippers. But there was more to it than that. There was an aura around Dawn, something uncanny, otherworldly, even. It occurred to Riley that Link hadn’t just been spouting off. Dawn really  _ was  _ more powerful than the others.

   And for the first time, Riley began to feel frightened. Of a vampire.

   It was something he’d never felt before.

   “Uh... uh, Dawn. Look. Um.” His mouth went dry. He felt like he did the day after a bite, his limbs weak and his throat raw. But it wasn’t dehydration and bite residue. This was  _ fear _ . “You’re right. I shouldn’t have left.”

   Dawn’s hand shot out, and she grabbed Riley by the throat. “Say that again,” she said. She lifted him up off the ground – he was so tall she had to raise her hand high to do it, but she did, and apparently without any struggle at all. “Go on!” she snapped at him. “Say it again!”

   “Ggg-I... shoughldn’t... ggghave... gleft,” he choked out.

   Dawn shook him once. “Why did you leave?”

   He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. Things were starting to go grey already. “Because... gggh... be-cause....”

   Dawn seemed to realize this wasn’t the best position for detailed interrogation, and she threw him onto the bed. “How long were you a  _ regular _ ?” she asked. “How long were you getting your bite on?” She leaped and landed on the bed with catlike grace, arching over him with her fist clenched. “You were still with Buffy? Did she know?”

   Riley gasped and scrambled back, until he sat against the headboard. He felt incredibly vulnerable on this bed, suddenly. A male voice hummed through the knot of vampire girls outside, but they were too tightly packed, and none of them seemed keen on letting Link in. No rescue was coming from that quarter. Rescue. That was just…. He was supposed to be the one who  _ came _ to the rescue, not the one who needed it.

   “Uh, uh, yeah. Yeah, she-she found out,” he said. “Before I left.”

   “Buffy  _ knew _ you were coming to get your bite on?” Dawn said. “And she didn’t tell me? She let me think you were all noble and brave, she wouldn’t even let me be pissed at you!” She kicked at his head. “Well, I was pissed!” she yelled. “I was fucking pissed!”

   “I get it,” he said, through what was going to become a fat lip. “Every right to be. I shouldn’t have left.”

   “Yes, you should have!” she yelled, kicking him again. He tried to fend the kick off, and heard something snap in his forearm as she grabbed it, twisting it painfully. Spiral fracture, most likely. He could feel himself going into shock, and fought off the numbness and nausea as she grabbed him by the hair and lifted him up to glare into his face. “You should have left before we wasted our time on you. You should have left before you made us  _ care _ about you. You should have left when you realized Buffy was a thousand times better than you, in every possible way.” She shook him like he was nothing bigger than a bad kitten. “You should have left the moment you realized you weren’t worthy of her, and would  _ never _ be worthy of her, and the only person who could be is someone who would  _ stand by her even when it was hard! _ Someone like Spike!” 

   She shook him again, and his teeth rattled in his skull. “You weren’t strong enough for her,” she growled at him. It sounded utterly demonic. “You were  _ never _ strong enough for her! And I’m not talking about your goddamn muscles, because Xander was strong enough. Mom was strong enough. But you? You were a weak, pathetic, selfish little wanker from the day you were born!” 

   Dawn grabbed his head and twisted, and Riley felt sure his neck was about to break. In what he was sure were going to be his last seconds, he actually thought, not of Buffy, but of Sam. He should never have come back to this town.

   But the crunch didn’t come. Dawn growled and dropped him over the side of the bed. Then she jumped down, stomping on him, knocking the wind out of him and possibly cracking a few ribs before she went to her knees beside him. 

   “Not gonna kill you,” she said. “Someone would get pissed about it, and you aren’t worth it. But I could. You realize I could?” 

   He nodded, feeling helpless. 

   She grabbed him by the hair again and made him sit up and face her. “You like the bite, Riley?” She shook herself into fangs. “How about this?”

   She plunged toward his throat, biting hard, and it wasn’t fun. It wasn’t a warm thrill of pleasure, the sense of being needed. It was just fucking  _ painful _ . She made obscene sounds as she sucked, guzzling at his throat like it was a god damn slurpee, forcing him... eating him. She was fucking  _ eating _ him! He’d never realized it before, it had been so quiet and seductive. But he was being eaten alive!

   The fear escalated into terror, sheer panic even, as he scrambled and fought to get away. But Dawn, little baby Dawn, who was so delicate and so much smaller than him, was stronger, so much stronger, stronger than he would have thought possible. How could she be so strong? She was a girl, and he was…. He struggled, but she held him, and when he struggled harder, she broke something in his shoulder. He screamed, then screamed again, louder as the pain and the terror gripped him as hard as she did.

   Then he started to feel weak. Then things started to go grey. And then... ultimately... he stopped struggling.


	41. Blood-Junkie

 

 

   Dusk kept feeding until she felt full, and then she took a little bit more, just because she bloody could. Riley tasted like a blood junkie. He’d done this before, recently even, within the last month. Goddamn self-righteous asshole.  _ I like you sort of leaning over me. _ God! Dusk squeezed something, and broke another bone, to hear the crunch of it. He was already passed out, though, so the bastard didn’t feel it.

   She was tempted to kill him. Very, very tempted.

   She finally let the jerk go. He was still bleeding. She’d pierced his external jugular, which wasn’t huge, but it could kill him if the bleeding wasn’t stopped. As she glared at her sister’s ex-boyfriend, Link finally plunged through the girls. Had he finally realized their allegiance was really to her now, and not him? Dusk had played her role as  _ Señora _ very softly, letting him think he was in charge, never challenging him directly, never claiming the girls as hers. But she’d felt their allegiances shift these last weeks, as she grew stronger and more sure of herself. She exercised her boss-factor – her  _ dominance _ – very quietly. But she’d felt it.

   It was kind of a rush, actually.

   Link started screaming at her. “What have you done? That was one of my  _ best steers _ ! He’s all broke now, he’ll never come back!”

   “Yeah, and if you don’t stop the bleeding, he’ll bloody die,” Dusk said. “Unless you want that. We could all go on a feeding frenzy. You up for it girls?”

   There was a dark murmur of amused interest from the other suckers.

   Link got pissed. “You bitches, get back to your rooms. Now!”

   The girls only stood in the doorway, staring at him.

   “I said get  _ out _ ,” Link roared.

   “Go on, girls,” Dusk said. “Show’s over.”

   They looked disappointed, but most of them at least backed away from the door. Link didn’t like that they’d listened to Dusk instead of him. He rounded on her. “You’ve been up on your high-horse long enough, cowgirl,” he said low. He glared at her through his yellow eyes. “And I will break you to ride, yet!”

   He grabbed for her arm, and Dusk shook him off. He growled again, grabbing for her hair, forcing her to look into his eyes. “You will listen to me, bitch!” he intoned. “You  _ will listen to me! _ I’m the goddamn honcho here, and you’re just some fucking fledge who needs to be taught her fucking place!” 

   He pushed Dusk down onto the bed, still staring into her eyes. It was hard... really hard to fight him. Dusk found herself freezing up. His thrall wasn’t strong enough to make her want what he was about to do to her, but he could stop her from fighting. He yanked up her skirt, still muttering about knowing her place, he was master, this was his house, she was just his bitch. He had himself out and was already – god. She had to stop looking into his eyes. She couldn’t. He’d grabbed her gaze. She couldn’t look away.

This was so much like another moment. Another moment when she didn’t fight, couldn’t fight, couldn’t get away, couldn’t… go home.

   “Yeah, that’s it, bitch,” Link muttered. “Show you your place, then take that damn blood out of you. I like biting my bitches, and you’ll let me, you’ll – ahhh!” His enthralling mutter turned into a blood curdling scream as Dusk’s hand reached up, jabbing her thumb into his eye.

   There. Now he couldn’t hold her gaze anymore. Dusk fucking took her power  _ back _ . She was not going to  _ submit _ to this, not this time. She sat up, forcing him off her, with strength she hadn’t had back then. With a demonic roar she tore out the jellied orb, squishing it in her fist like a grape. It felt  _ fantastic _ . She was tempted to take out the other one, but a persistent beeping was grabbing her attention.

   Riley was passed out on the floor from blood-loss. Link was moaning, curled into fetal position and cradling his bleeding eye socket. The only girls left in the door were Martine and the youngest fledge in the place, who had been turned at just thirteen. Dusk looked at her. God. What a terrible waste of a young life!

   The beeping was coming from Riley’s shirt. Dusk reached for it and pulled out – huh. She’d expected black-ops James Bondy crap, knowing Riley, but it was just a cell phone. She answered it.

   “Thank god!” said a female voice on the other end. “I’ve been trying to reach you forever. I got to Sunnydale about two hours ago, I’ve been trying to find you. We tracked down the demon, found the nest in a cave near the college. The Doctor was gone though, and the eggs looked like they’d been abandoned. He hadn’t even left them on ice. Looks like he got tipped off.”

   Dusk frowned. The mission hadn’t even been completed, and Riley came to get his suck on? What a jerk.

    “Rye?” said the woman on the other end. “Rye, did you even pick up?”

   “Riley’s been attacked by a very pissed off vampire,” Dusk said into the phone. “He’s about fifteen minutes from death if no one stops the bleeding. Tell his squad they should do better than to pick up some blood-junkie if they want someone reliable.”

   “Who is this?”

   “The vampire who got pissed off enough to bite him,” she said. “Here, I’ll be nice. I’ll leave him on the corner of Sixth and Main for you, how’s that sound?” She slammed the phone shut and turned to Martine. “Hey, Martine, show this gentleman out, will you?” Dusk said. “The alley will do. I’ll take him from there.”

   “Will do,” Martine said.

   “Might want to take on a few more responsibilities around here,” Dusk added. “I don’t think Link will be anywhere near as good at his job anymore.”

   “You fucking bitch!” Link whimpered from the floor.

   Dusk actually laughed. She reached down and picked up the little black box on the ground. A remote, Riley had called it. A remote for Spike’s chip…. She held it tight in her hand. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “I need to get something.”

   She ran upstairs and back to her little room. She grabbed the only thing that mattered, the long black coat hung on the back of the door. Then she headed back down the stairs.

   Thirty seconds later she came back up and grabbed the money out of her cash box, because leaving it would have been stupid.

   She left the suck house without a backward glance, and grabbed Riley by the hair, dragging him out of the alley Martine had left him in. His bleeding, wounded form trailed behind her. She walked the two blocks to Sixth and Main and happily abandoned the injured soldier there in plain view on the corner for whoever the fuck wanted him.

***

 

Samantha Finn looked down at her beaten, beloved husband, and felt like an idiot for marrying him in the first place. 

    Why was he always doing this? Why was he always running off alone, risking his life to face the demons, pouring himself into them like this? If she listened to him, she would have been inclined to blame his ex, that  _ slayer _ he went on about, a woman up on a pedestal so high that Sam could barely believe she was real. But Sam didn’t buy that anymore. This had to be something else. 

Sam had heard of slayers, now that she had been part of the demon squad for a while. There was some intelligence on them – extreme strength, some foresight, hunting intuition that bordered on the supernatural. But the picture Riley painted of the cold woman who couldn’t be touched, the powerful woman who was better than everyone, and knew it, and was proud of it, this kind of fairytale ice queen? She just couldn’t believe it. If she had been such an ice queen, why would she have wanted to date anyone in the first place? 

No, Riley was just sort of like that. He needed constant reassurance that he was enough, so constant that it was work, sometimes, to convince him. And if she didn’t convince him, he’d do something stupid to prove it. Like when he went after that damn succubus and her cronies. Or when he chose to chase after a suvolte demon and its spawn all alone in an area known to be full of hostile sub-terrestrials. She used to blame this Buffy for this need in him, but she was getting to the point she wondered if it was just Riley.

Sam was sick of hearing about Buffy. 

Which was why Rye was pissing her off when he said he needed to get to Buffy’s house. 

“I’m taking you to the damn hospital!” Sam snapped at him. “You need a blood transfusion, dammit, and you need a doctor to look you over.” 

   She almost laughed. She’d come to this place looking for a Doctor. One who had apparently heard they were coming and abandoned his entire payload rather than get caught. So much for Riley’s brilliant plan, picking this place because he knew the area. She had  _ known _ it was too populated! She’d  _ known _ it would have been impossible to keep anything secret here. God  _ damn it! _

“I need… need to tell Buffy. Her sister. Dawn… Dawn’s a vampire.”

Sam glanced at Riley. The bleeding from his neck seemed to have stopped. She’d put pressure on it the moment she found him, and eventually she’d been sure the blood was clotting, and he wasn’t really about to die. Probably. But she knew he needed a transfusion, and she knew it wasn’t safe taking him to this Buffy’s house. “No,” she said. “Hospital first. You’re not even stabilized.” 

“I’ll be fine.” 

“God dammit Riley!” she shouted. She wanted to hit him. “Do you  _ want _ to die? Succubi, vampires, you won’t even go to the medic! Think it’s not  _ manly  _ enough to admit you’re human?” She slammed on the accelerator and swerved when she passed a sign with a blue H on the side of the road. She’d almost missed the hospital turn off. 

“But Dawn. She’s a vampire. I need… I need to tell Buffy!”

Sam was pretty sure Buffy already knew, if she was so all-mighty hot-shot as Riley had always made her out to be. She should have known better than to marry some guy on the rebound. It had seemed romantic – she had been sure they were going to die on the mission they’d been about to head out on – but now that she had to actually live with that choice, she wasn’t at all sure it was a good one. 

    For one, it was really frowned upon in the military having a romantic liaison with your superior officer. Sam hadn’t known that until  _ after _ the marriage, when it was too late for her to call him on it. He’d known it was against military policy, ethics of command or something. But she’d been new to the military, new to demons in general, and  _ he’d _ started the relationship. She simply hadn’t known how inappropriate it was. The squad was letting it happen, because there were so few demon-trained military, but under most circumstances even a kiss would have meant they had to be moved to separate units. 

As for the marriage itself, Riley was infuriating. When it was good he was gallant and sweet, and he tried to support her. But there was another side. He lied and he boasted and he was needy, and he kept doing these stupid things and expecting everyone to feel sorry for him when they went bad. That was why she’d gone over his head and called for permission to take the squad to Sunnydale against his orders. Good thing she had, or Rye would be pouring out his last on that street corner. 

“You’re getting a blood transfusion if I have to kill you first!” Sam said. And really, the more her goddamn superior officer complained about it, the less inclined she was to do it. Just let the bastard die, since he seemed so hellbent on it! 

She didn’t really mean that. Sam was a good and moral woman, who had worked hard to get into the Peace Corps before she joined the demon squad, who believed in what she was doing, saving people. Even reckless, morally ambiguous, handsome young men who… had made her fall in love with them. Dammit. 

   “I’m not gonna let you die, Rye,” she muttered as she pulled up to the hospital. Fortunately, if what Riley had said about Sunnydale was true, they’d be well used to these kinds of injuries with extreme blood loss. “Not even if you  _ are _ an idiot.” 

 

***

 

   “Thanks,” Buffy said quietly as she accepted a cup of herbal tea from Tara.

   She’d needed magic and someone to talk to, and these days, that meant going to Melissa’s house to visit Tara. Buffy was glad Tara had invited her to group on Tuesdays. If they hadn’t had that connection, she might have let her friendship with Tara fade a bit after the breakup with Willow. And then there they’d be, pretty much witchless. It would have sucked. What would they have been reduced to? Back to threatening the demons at Willy’s place and walking around like ninnies? 

   She had a sneaking suspicion Riley would have loved that. A long, boring search, which would essentially mean a romantic walk with him in the moonlight, with only an undercurrent of important-dangerous-mission-aren’t-we-great.

   They were in Melissa’s living room, which was nicely decorated in soothing pastels with furniture – like the couch Buffy was sitting on now – that was at just the right place between soft and firm. It sure as heck wasn’t what sixteen-year-old Buffy would have expected from a six-foot-three, two-hundred-fifty pounds of mostly muscle exotic dancer who had originally been named Russel.

   Sixteen-year-old Buffy would have seriously wigged about that. But then, sixteen-year-old Buffy hadn’t been the brightest bulb, had she? She’d been just a dumb kid who had fallen…. She shook her head. Whatever. She’d grown up since then. The world wasn’t as black and white anymore, and things like Tara’s friend didn’t get much more than a “huh, okay” from twenty-one-now Buffy.

   Man to woman, human to vampire, normal girl to slayer. As long as you were happy, healthy, and not hurting anyone (well, anyone who wasn’t a people-eating and/or world destroying monster), did it really matter? Did it make you a freak? Did it…? She shook her head again and started to take a sip of the tea.

   “I made a blend that helps with clarity of thought,” Tara said, sitting down beside Buffy with her own cup. Buffy froze with hers right at her lips. “I-it’s not magic,” Tara hastily assured her. “Just a natural property of the herbs.”

  “Sorry,” Buffy said with an apologetic smile before taking a drink. It was good stuff. Sweet and sort of floral. “Just with all this stuff with Willow, I’m kind of leery of magic right now.” She fiddled with her cup for a moment. “She, uh, she’s doing better. With the magic. With the not using of it. She can even go to the Magic Box if she’s with someone. That’s where she is now, looking up this demon thing with Giles.”

  “Th-that’s good. That she’s…. That’s good.” There was a moment of awkward silence, broken by Tara taking a deep breath and looking at her. “So, this demon. Are you sure it’s really dangerous? I mean, that little opening speech, was that actually what Riley said? It’s kind of, um….”

  “Cartoony?”

  That got a shy little smile. “Yeah, kind of. ‘Buffy Summers, come with me!’” She giggled slightly, then was serious again. “But I guess if he had time for all that….”

  Buffy sighed. “Yeah. He claimed it was dangerous, but there was all this stuff about them being rare, but also breeding like turbo bunnies. Sounds more like prey to me. And like he was just using it as an excuse to be back in my life.”

  “Back in your life as in…?” Tara trailed off and lifted a brow suggestively. She was still pretty shy, but she’d been opening up more and more to Buffy lately, showing there was more there than just a quiet, nice young woman.

  “It sure seemed like it,” Buffy grumped. “And he got real jealous over Spike.”

  Of course, Spike had gotten real jealous over  _ him _ . Boys and their pissing contests. Which, okay, wasn’t entirely fair. How many times had Drusilla cheated on him? Had to give a guy a complex, especially in this situation, when confronted with the guy who had been there before him, someone who vaguely resembled Ange…. Nope, not gonna go there.

  Tara sighed thoughtfully. “Well, I could try a demon locating spell, but this is Sunnydale. It would light up at least half the map.”

  “I know.” Buffy set her empty cup on the coffee table and stood up to pace. She needed action. Movement. “Any chance of narrowing it down? It’s a newcomer, we know that much at least, and it just spawned. Or is about to spawn. Something with the spawnage.”

  “Hmm. I could… could search for eggs, maybe?” Tara offered. “I think I can make the spell hone in on burgeoning demonic life. I’d just need to pick up a few things from the Magic Box. Could you….” She looked away nervously. “You said Willow was there, and I….”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll go with you.”

They walked back together. “It’s not that I don’t  _ want _ to see Willow,” Tara said. “I do. I… do. I miss her. I-I st-still… I still love her,” she said, after calming her stutter with deep breath. “It’s just… it’s really hard to trust her, you know?”

“Yeah,” Buffy said. She knew what that was like. “When people have done awful things… it can be hard to believe they won’t do them again.”

Tara looked over at Buffy. “How are things going with Spike?”

Buffy’s head sank. She hunched her shoulders and awkwardly twisted her arms low in front of her, stretching, fidgeting, nervous. “Is it okay if I give two answers to that?”

“Yeah.”

“Things are going  _ great, _ ” she said quickly. “He’s tender and loving and strong enough I don’t have to worry about whether I’m gonna break him unless I was really  _ trying _ . And he dances, like, divinely, and we like to watch the same stuff on TV. And yeah, we fight a lot, but even that’s not a problem, ‘cause I know he’ll still be there at the end of it. It’s… it’s actually kind of  _ nice _ having someone I can fight with, and not have to worry that it’ll end up as some end-of-the-world thing.” 

   Not everyone got that she wanted someone she could safely scream at sometimes. And punch in the nose. And wrestle down to the ground. And hold down and basically _ force _ sometimes, because that was such a rush, and her exposure to Kinkster-Katie at the psych ward meant that Buffy knew to have Spike agree to a safeword before they got deep into the who’s-the-biggest-bad-tonight dominant slayer/vampire fighty-sexy stuff. 

She wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t ever met Katie, and Spike had brought out the handcuffs. Would she have refused? Or would she have gone along with it like she wanted to, but felt weird and deviant and like there was something wrong with her? She shuddered at that idea. It was true. Some of the things she gleefully did with Spike would have filled her mind with deep self-revulsion a few years ago. And also, Spike had at first laughed at the idea of a safeword, and they had already started some dominance play. Without a way to stop if they meant it, things could have gotten  _ really _ out of hand, and it wouldn’t have even occurred to Spike to have that safety net. He was a demon. Like he’d said, even the thing Dawn had done to him seemed normal (if unpleasant) to a vampire.

The sex was epic.

    “So… that’s great,” Buffy said. “He makes me really,  _ really _ happy. A lot.” She realized she was sounding panicked as she said this, and she made herself calm down. 

    “So, what’s the second answer?”

    Buffy looked down. “There’s something wrong,” she said. “I can’t even put my finger on what it is. He’s happy with me, and he loves me, and I… I think I do love him.” It was always so hard to be sure anymore. “But it’s… it’s like he expected something else, once I accepted him. Not that I do something other than what I’m doing, just  _ something else. _ It’s like he’s searching for something in me. Searching for  _ himself _ in me, and it seems to hurt him that I can’t actually give it to him.” She glanced at Tara. “He said he wanted a soul.”

    Tara blanched. “That’s… that’s not… um.”

    “I wasn’t asking you to perform a curse, Tara.”

    Tara looked decidedly relieved. “That was not a pretty spell, Buffy. I’m not even sure I could do it, anyway, it’s not my kind of magic. Willow showed it to me, what she did to Angel? It’s the blackest of black. It couldn’t possibly make either of you happy if we did that, I can’t believe that vampire she cursed is anything other than a black sink of misery for everyone around him, I...”

    “Really,” Buffy said, taking Tara’s arm. “I wasn’t asking you.” And she knew Tara was right about Angel. “It’s just that some of the things Spike did… that he has done… bother him. Like a human would be bothered by them. And then some….” She looked down. “He says it himself. He’s been a very bad man.”

    “And the disconnect is…” 

    “Disturbing,” Buffy said. “For him as much as for me, I think. He keeps  _ trying _ to be good. For me. But… it’s like he doesn’t really know how. He can go through the motions, but he’s looking for a depth that… isn’t there.”

    “Aren’t all vampires like that?” 

    “Kind of two dimensional?” Buffy asked. “I’ve only met one who wasn’t.”

    And it was the one with the soul. It didn’t make him  _ good _ , but it sure did make Angel deeper, in some unfathomable way. 

    “Well… if that’s okay, then what does it matter?” Tara asked. 

    “It would be okay, if he was happy with it. Like Dawn and Harmony and all the other vampires I’ve met are happy with it. But I don’t think he is,” Buffy said. “That’s the problem. The relationship is fine, but….” 

    It was too personal to tell anyone the details. She’d said she’d be his soul, and she was trying. But there was still a hollow space between them, and she couldn’t fill it. She didn’t know if it was something wrong with her, or something wrong with him. 

    “Is it going to tear you apart?” Tara asked.

    “Not yet,” Buffy said. “ _ Maybe _ not ever. I mean, it’s working so far, and it’s not like I’m looking ahead to fat grandchildren. I only  _ just _ turned twenty-one. It’s just… I see him searching my eyes sometimes, and… he’s reaching. I just think he expected something else.”

    “Like what?” 

    “Like I’d make him whole?” She shook her head, heartsick over it. “He  _ loves _ me. But….” Her soul wasn’t his. No matter how much they both wanted it to be.

    “But it’s working?” Tara asked, sounding reassuring. “You’re happy together?”

    “So far.” Buffy shrugged. 

    “Do you like who you are when you’re with him?” Tara asked.

    “Yeah.”

    “And you trust he has your best interests at heart?”

    “Oh, always.”

    Tara reached out a hand and squeezed Buffy’s upper arm. “Then it sounds like it’s working just fine.”

    "So long as the First Evil doesn't get hold of him, like it did Angel," Buffy said. She'd briefed Tara on the advent of the Bringers, too. 

    "Why do you think it's after Spike?" Tara asked. "Sounds like he's been well and truly seduced to good already. Wouldn't it be going after someone who needed to be seduced to evil?"

    Buffy frowned. She hadn't thought about that. But they were almost at the Magic Box already, lights still blazing out of it, since Giles was pretty much living there. “We're here. You ready?” she asked Tara. 

    Tara nodded, squaring her shoulders.

    Her dramatic entrance as she went in to see Willow again was somewhat spoiled by an SUV swerving around the curb. Buffy quickly pushed Tara behind her and went into defensive stance, but what jumped out from the driver’s seat was only Riley, looking quite a bit the worse for wear. 

    “Buffy!” he cried out, lunging for her, and then fell in an ungainly heap on the sidewalk. 

    “God dammit, Rye!” A woman in a black-ops uniform almost identical to Riley’s jumped out of the passenger door and ran to pick him up. “I told you you needed to stay in the hospital!”

    “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m–” Completely belying this, he burst into a coughing fit, and when the woman tried to pick him up, he groaned.

“You didn’t even let them do an X-Ray,” the woman chastised him. 

“Is he refusing medical care again?” Buffy asked. 

The woman looked up, rueful. “Yeah.”

    “He does that.” 

    “I know,” the woman said. She stood up. “You Buffy?”

    “Summers,” Buffy confirmed, holding out her hand. 

    They shook. “Samantha Finn. Pleased to finally meet the legend.” 

    Buffy frowned. “Samantha… uh,  _ Finn? _ ” She looked from one to the other of them. “Any relation?”

    “Well, wife,” Samantha said. 

Buffy wondered if she should be surprised Riley hadn’t mentioned this, and then figured, no. If he was willing to fuck his students as a TA, and cheat on Buffy with a bunch of vampire whores, Riley getting married and then sort of wanting to cheat on his wife with his ex really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Actually, given that military guys often lived away from their families for years and it was considered completely normal, Buffy had only one question. 

   “Did you marry her before, or after we broke up?” 

***

 

It was one of those nights. A big bad was brewing. Riley was back. And Xander stared at Anya, wanting to hug himself. “So… that’s it? You’re sure?” 

“Yeah,” Anya said sadly. “I’m sure.” She swallowed. “You were just being honest, and… and I wasn’t listening. You’d dropped a lot of hints before that night that you weren’t happy.” 

Xander glanced through the bookshelves, which were granting them limited privacy, as Giles and Willow searched through demonology books, adamantly pretending that they weren’t trying to eavesdrop. 

    Anya had come back to the Magic Box to pick up her final paycheck, and a few personal items. She said she had planned to come see Xander, or at least leave him a note or something before she left town. But since he was there with the others… this was it. 

    “You’re not mad?”

    “I’m furious,” Anya said. “I desperately want to seek vengeance on you.” Then she shook her head. “But you didn’t do anything wrong. That's why it took me so long to figure out what to do. Because it’s not like you cheated on me, or beat me, or left me at the altar or something. You just told the truth.” 

    “I was always telling the truth,” Xander said. “I do love you.”

    “But you don’t want to get married, and… what I want isn’t what you want,” Anya said. 

    Xander looked at the ground. It was all true. 

    “It could be worse,” she said. “D’Hoffryn offered me my old job back.” That made Xander look up. That was what everyone had been afraid of, and what no one had dared say aloud. “I turned him down. I’ve been human too long, I think all the eviscerations would start to pall after a bit.”

    “So where have you been all this time?” 

    “Oh, I did  _ go _ to Arrashmaharr,” Anya said. “I stayed in my friend Halley’s Cavern of Wrath? The boiling pools of the Blood of the Treacherous do wonders for the skin.” Xander stared. “Oh, they’re not really boiling,” she added, as if that was the problem.

    Xander decided that so long as it was over, he should just let that go. “So, where are you headed?”

    “Well, now that this persona I adopted is over twenty-one, I can go anywhere,” she said. “I was thinking Brazil, for starters.”

    “That sounds fun,” Xander said. “Be sure you learn how to order a Piña Colada in Portuguese, though.”

    Anya looked at him with something he couldn’t help but realize was pity. “Xander? I speak every living language on earth, and a few dead ones.” She bent forward and kissed him, softly, gently. “I know you never really understood,” she whispered. “I’ll miss you.”

    Xander reached forward and put his arms around her, for what he suspected would be the last time. “I’ll miss you, too.” He was trying not to cry, dammit. He didn’t want to cry. “It was….” Words fazed him, and all he could do was just hold her fiercely, and desperately keep the sob back. 

    “It was  _ real _ ,” Anya whispered in his ear. They held each other warmly for a long moment, and then let each other go. 

    “Maybe one day….” 

    “Maybe,” she said. They both knew it was unlikely. “I’ll send postcards. We’ll all stay in touch.”

    Xander nodded. He was done speaking. 

    Anya went back to the table and spoke a moment to Giles and Willow, and Xander hung behind the bookshelves, feeling wretched. But she hadn’t decided to disembowel him. That was a plus. The jingling bell of the Magic Box door told him that Anya was out of his life now, probably forever.

    He rubbed the tears from his cheeks. 

    A minute later the bell jingled again, and he turned, half hoping, half afraid it would be Anya, come back. But it was Buffy, and some cute girl in a black uniform, dragging a beaten Riley into the shop, with Tara behind them. There was no way fate had just dropped a new love interest in the form of one of Riley’s squad mates so conveniently into Xander’s lap, so he assumed this was simply bad news. 

“And you’re sure it was Dawn?” Buffy was asking. 

“Oh, Buffy. I couldn’t mistake her,” Riley was croaking. “She… she was so evil. She was a beast, uncontrollable. Even the leader of her coven couldn’t handle her, she was… was just….” He shook his head. “You should have told me.”

“What could you have done that I couldn’t?” Buffy snapped.

“What I don’t get is why you went to that nest in the first place,” the woman in black said. “We weren’t after vampires.”

“In-information,” Riley said. “I was trying… to get information… on the Doctor.”

“Or get his suck on,” Buffy said without prevarication. “He likes getting bit by vampires.” At the young woman’s horrified look, Buffy added, “And amphetamines, and endorphins, and he gets a rush off of dating girls he has power over. Maybe ‘cause it’s  _ naughty _ .” She put her hand on her shoulder. “No matter what he tells you? His addictions aren’t your fault. Can you guys take care of this?” she asked the crew, gesturing at Riley. “I gotta go check out a suck house.”

“Do you need anyone to come with you?” Giles asked. 

Buffy shook her head. “I probably won’t set this one on fire,” she said on her way out the door. “Probably.” 

 

 


	42. Family

  
  


   Spike was lying in his bed in just his jeans, trying not to think about Buffy "hunting demons" with Riley, when the door in the sewer passage creaked heavily open. Light little feet tripped up those last few corners. He would have grabbed a weapon and slid out of sight, but he recognized the presence before he saw or even smelt it. He sat up, grabbed his t-shirt from off the floor, and slid it on before settling back down as if he hadn’t moved a muscle.

   Sure enough, the figure who turned the final corner and stood before him was Dawn – or Dusk, or whatever bloody thing she wanted to call herself these days. His little fledge looked strong and healthy from all the blood. But her eyes. Ah, poor bit. Her eyes were shadowed in a way he hadn’t seen before, and there was a harder set to her mouth, a chiseled look to her face that spoke of something harsh. 

   She wore an elegant red dress that made her look older than her years, not the schoolgirl rubbish that Link had preferred for her. It smelt of droplets of old blood, from several sources. Her hair was teased up, sort of punk, her earrings glittered, and she wore a spiked dog collar. His duster was folded neatly over her arm. She looked… older.

   She glanced around, stopping short when she saw him on the bed. She stood staring at him for a moment, and Spike looked back, just waiting. She was here for a reason. She’d get to it soon enough.

   “Um, I... I brought. Um. Your coat,” she said. She laid it down on the bar. “Your coat.”

   Spike stared at her, impassive.

   “You forgot it.”

   Silence.

   “And... and, um. I got this thing.” She sounded very nervous. “This thing, um, tonight. I was... I was at the Ranch House, and we got a new client in, and I was told he used to be a regular, and I went in, and, and, see the thing is, it was Riley.” Her face clenched, and she looked disgusted.

   “I mean, what was he doing there? The girls said he used to come in a lot, which... that would mean he was... he was at the Ranch House when he was still with Buffy, right? And... and that didn’t make sense to me, and we kind of got into a fight, and, um. Well. But I didn’t kill him!” she said quickly. “I... I wanted to kill him. I got... really close to killing him. And, and not like it was with Tara and Buffy, where I just kind of wanted them? I... I actually wanted Riley to not be there anymore. Like, it wasn’t that I wanted him, I actually wanted him  _ dead _ . Like...  _ dead _ , dead. Like... did you know when people die they don’t come back anymore?”

   Spike was hard pressed not to laugh. Yeah, that thought didn’t really connect easily when you were a fledge.

   “And I wanted him to not be there. To be dead. Just snap his neck or something,” she lifted her hands, miming grabbing someone by the throat. “And I knew I could kill him. He...  _ he _ knew I could kill him. I think... I think he thought we couldn’t kill him. Because we were girls, you know? Or because we were weak? And he was strong? But.... Actually, I don’t think he was thinking at all. ‘Cause... um. He said he was going to kill you.” She scrabbled in the pocket of the coat she’d laid down. “He had this.”

   She held it up. It was small black box, looked like a walkie-talkie, and Spike frowned at it. He had seen something like it before. Way back when he was still captive by the Initiative. He seemed to remember the scientists holding something like it, and it made his head a nasty buzzing thing until they gave him the meds what made everything daffodils and kittens. The remote for his chip. He’d almost forgotten they had it.

   “This thing,” she went on. “He said it could short out your chip? And... and fry your brain? By remote, sort of? But, but I was thinking, you know, if... if it can do that, maybe it can turn it off, too? Or... or something. I mean, I know you told me that when you tried to take it out yourself all it did was shock you, like, you thought it was going to dust you? But, see, if we turn it off first, then... then maybe you could be free of it? And I thought I wanted... I wanted to bring this to you, I wanted you to-to have it. Um. So, here.”

   She set the remote down on the bed, and hesitated, and then looked down. “Well. That. There. That. That was why I came. Um. I guess I’ll go now.”

   Spike watched her turn and walk away. He’d have called her back if she’d gotten as far as the passage, but she didn’t. She turned back to him. “See, Spike-ke–” her voice caught on his name, and she had to stop a moment.

   “See, the thing is, I know I got it wrong,” she said. “It-it made sense. At the time, what I did? It made sense, I just... I wanted... see, I wanted something of my own,” she said, and her words came in a rush. “All my own, so I ran off, with Janice, without telling anyone, not you or the Scoobies or Buffy or anyone, just a night, when I could be a normal girl and things could make sense, and I knew, I knew all the scary things were supposed to be home Halloween, which was why I told Janice then, that night, if we were gonna do it, ‘cause she had these boys she wanted me to meet, and I knew Buffy said no dating until I was sixteen. So we went off, and it was just supposed to be, you know, talking and... and mischief and maybe kisses, but-but the kisses turned into this other thing, this... this very other thing.”

   She gasped, swallowed, and made herself go on. “This other thing wasn’t fun, and it wasn’t me, and it hurt. And I was so scared, Spike, I was so scared!”

   She was starting to cry now, but Spike knew he couldn’t interrupt it, as much as he wanted to. She’d been so disconnected, so distant from the memory. He couldn’t get in the way of it, or it would never drain out properly.

   “I was so scared, and so confused, and I just wanted to go  _ home _ , that’s all, I wanted to go _ home _ . But I never got home, because then I was dead, and everything, everything was wrong suddenly. Good was bad, and bad was good, and evil was right, and right was wrong, and I didn’t know what to do with any of it. I was just... just swimming,” she said. “Drowning. I couldn’t keep my head above water, and all I wanted was just... blood. It was like I wanted my blood back, I’d lost it, I wanted it _ back _ ! You know?”

   He didn’t dare even nod.

   “And there I was, kind of lost and twisted and-and hurting. And then you came, and... and you got rid of the monsters. You cleaned house, and you took me into your arms, and... and you made it  _ better _ .”

   Her forehead was as twisted as if she were vamped up, but she was just frowning into the horror in her memories. “And the thing is, it  _ was _ better then. It wasn’t gone, but it was  _ better _ , it was so much better, and I wasn’t-I wasn’t scared anymore, and I wasn’t alone anymore, and I wasn’t lost. I-I was yours, you know? And that was you, that was all you, with the bite and blood and it wasn’t that ugly, scary thing anymore, because you held me, and you were nice about it, and you talked to me about it first, and it all made sense. And it was so much better. And then, see, the thing is, I thought... I thought... if... if you could make the one part better, then if I could get you to touch me the way Justin did, that... that maybe... maybe you could make  _ that _ better, too.”

   Spike closed his eyes. So that was it. Her desperation to make love to him. If his strength could erase the turning, make it from something ugly to something beautiful, perhaps he could erase the rape.

   “It doesn’t work like that.” It was the first thing he’d said.

   Dawn sobbed, and dragged in her breath, which seemed to catch in her throat. “I know,” she said. “I know, I know, I just made it all worse. But... but the thing is, I... I beat up Riley. For-for Buffy, and... and for the girls, and... and I can’t really go back to the Ranch House, ‘cause... ‘cause I kind of ripped out Link’s eye when he tried to thrall me again, and... and I was wondering if... if maybe I could come home?”

   She stumbled in place, as if realizing that she’d already gone too far. “I know, you don’t trust me, and I totally get that, ‘cause I did the evil wrong. And it’s okay if you want to chain me while you’re sleeping, or lock me in the coffin or something, ‘cause you don’t have to trust me. Or like me anymore. But I’ll clean up all the dust, and I’ll polish your boots, even, and I’ll-I’ll clear out when you want to be with Buffy, and I’ll live on nothing but sheep’s blood and I’ll-I’ll even do my homework, and....” She fell to her knees. “God, please, I’ll do anything, Spike, anything. I didn’t mean to screw it up. I want my sire back. I want  _ you _ back. I just want my coffin in the corner and to follow you, and I’ll do anything you say, and I’ll never touch you again, never. Let me come home. I’ll be your minion, your slave, anything, just let me come home, please, I want to come  _ home _ !”

   Her sobs were pathetic, and her obsequious minion instinct had just gone into overdrive, and he knew he really could order her about like a slave, probably for years after this, and she’d not only be okay with it, she’d be happy just to lick his boots. It was pitiful. And it spoke to what her life had been inside that suck house. Empty. Meaningless. The kind of life he wouldn’t have wished on his worst enemy.

    But he still had an evil streak. “I got rid of your coffin,” he said blithely.

   Dawn’s sobs redoubled, and she buried her head in her hands.

   “It was getting in the way.” He paused for effect as she moaned wretchedly. “Of your bed,” he finished.

   She looked up, tears streaked down her face.

   “Got it set up over there,” he gestured with his chin at the corner of the chamber, which he had actually furnished with walls, and a door. Dawn was startled as she looked where he was pointing and saw the finished room, with a half-sun carved into the door – either a dawn or a sun setting at dusk, depending on whichever name she preferred. “Been feeding up the kittens, they’ve gotten kind of big. Made a cat door in one of the walls upstairs. Even talked Xander into building me a spiral staircase to take over for the ladder, but that bit’s not finished yet.” He smiled at her softly. “‘Cause you wanted a staircase. Remember?”

   Dawn looked shocked, bewildered, too overwhelmed to even be happy yet.

   “I missed you, niblet,” he said quietly. “Been waiting for you to come home.”

   Dawn sobbed again, but this time it was abject relief, and when Spike held his arm up for her, she gladly and joyously fell into it, burying her head in his shoulder, and sobbing and sobbing. Then without warning she was screaming against him, lost and horrified, and Spike put his other arm around her and held her.

   “I’ve got you, niblet. It’s over.” He stroked her hair and murmured endearments and let her finally react. The truth of the death had only just caught up to her  _ now _ .

   Her screams subsided into sobs again, but they were quiet now. After a while he realized she was whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over again into his chest.

   “It’s all right, baby,” he whispered to her. “We all make mistakes. Turning gets rid of all the rules, and we have to make new ones. Have to figure out the why and the wherefore.” He kissed her temple. “I expected you to screw up. At different times, different ways. I screwed up a bunch myself when I first turned. Hurt people I loved. It happens.”

   “I’m sorry I died,” she said then. She looked up at him in total earnest. “I’m sorry I ran away and I didn’t protect her. Me. I-I trusted too much, that I’d always be saved. I forgot, I needed to save myself, sometimes. And I didn’t save myself, I got lost, and I died, and now I’m only this, and you’ve lost Dawn, and I’m sorry I lost her for you, and–”

   “It’s all right, pet,” Spike said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

   “But it  _ was _ –”

   Spike kissed her forehead again. “Buffy says it feels better to blame yourself. ‘Cause if it was your fault, you could prevent it, and it wasn’t out of your hands. You’re safer if the bad things that happen are all your fault. But... it wasn’t your fault. You did something very normal, on a night you thought would be safe.” He pulled the girl – the young vampire – back to his shoulder and held her. “I know that doesn’t make it better. It makes it scarier. Feels like we don’t have control over  _ anything _ . But you can choose to come home. And I can have it ready for you.”

   “I love you,” Dawn whispered. “I do, I know I screwed that up.”

   “I love you, too, niblet. But not like that, you got that?”

   “Yeah,” she said hurriedly. “Yeah, that’s fine, that’s okay. I don’t need that.”

   Spike stroked her hair. “That’s my girl,” he murmured. 

   Horrible thing was, the girl wasn’t wrong. If they hadn’t been what they had been – her the younger sister of the woman he loved, and so kind of like a sister to him, too – if they had had a romantic relationship, he  _ could _ have helped erase all those horrors of what her first time had been. He could have taken her with tenderness and love and that thing that had happened with Justin would have seemed a thousand miles away. 

   But with what they were, in the state she was in, if he’d gone that route it would have felt fine, and normal, and she would have been happy with it for a while. But eventually the ugliness of it would come back to bite them. Years from now she’d realize the inequality of it, the advantage taken, the selfishness inherent in the action. She’d have felt used. And it would have killed everything between them, possibly even resulted in dust at one end or another.

   One day he might even explain that to her. When she was old enough to wrap her head around it. In the meantime, the “no” was all she had to understand.

   “It’s okay, Dusk,” he whispered.

   She sniffed. “Couldn’t I be Dawn, again?” she asked. “I think… I think I’d rather be starting than ending.”

   Spike smiled. “All right, then. You’re safe, now, Dawn,” he said. He let her curl up safe and secure beside him. “I’ve got you.”

   And she fell asleep right there, as if she hadn’t slept properly in months.

   Poor little chit. She probably hadn’t. 

 

***

   “Well, that’s it,” Buffy announced as she came down the ladder. Cold and calm. Had to stay cold, so she didn’t feel the heartbreak of having to hunt down and stake little Dawnie. If she wasn’t cold, she wouldn’t be able to do it. “Dawn’s cracked. She tried to kill Riley, and she’s left the suck house – I checked. She took off, probably off killing. We may have to–”

   “Shh,” Spike said, when she looked over. And there she was. Dawn, curled up all innocent in his arms. She looked both older and younger than she had when Buffy had last seen her. “She’s come home.”

   Buffy stared, processing the sudden change to her reality. Dawn was  _ here _ . Here, not rampaging through the streets, crazed and high on blood. The fear and pain she’d been holding back drained away, leaving her feeling weak-kneed and almost dizzy for a moment. Damn it. Riley had been so certain... she rolled her eyes, disgusted with both herself and her ex. She shouldn’t be at all surprised that Riley had gotten something wrong. 

   The girl looked so innocent asleep. Buffy knew she wasn’t really, but…. She took an uncertain step back. This... this was a vampire thing, now. She should get out of the way, no matter how much she kind of wanted to join in the cuddle puddle. It wasn’t like this was... really her sister....

   But Spike lifted his hand for hers, and when Buffy reached out to hold it, he pulled her into the bed with them. “Trust me,” he said.

   It felt so good to be curled up beside Dawnie again. Even if she was cold and strange and made her vampire senses tingle, Buffy knew that face, that body. What she’d told everyone, that her connection with Dawn was  _ physical _ . It was. Dawn wasn’t just her sister, she was  _ herself _ . And yes, this was only an echo... but it was so beautiful. Like her sister had been beautiful. She reached up and stroked the fledgling’s hair, and it felt like Dawnie’s, and the curve of her arm was Dawn’s, and the gentle breathing, that was still Dawn.

   “We got her back, Buffy,” Spike said quietly. “Both of us. Do you know why she beat him?”

   Buffy shook her head.

   “For you,” he said. “She was pissed he cheated on you. She could have just fed on him and sent him on his way, no feeling about it. No thought. Just evil. She got angry _ for you _ . She loves you.”

   Buffy sniffed. Nope, no, she wasn’t going to cry because the vampire made out of her sister still loved her. That was stupid. Instead the slayer curled up with the two vampires who loved her. She was exhausted from all of the emotional ups and downs of the night and sleep was tugging instantly, but before she let it drag her down, she pulled out the cell phone she’d snagged from Riley and sent a text to Sam. Then she snuggled in closer, and they all fell asleep. As family.

 

 


	43. Power

 

 

   “Are those two  _ ever _ going to shut up?” the ghost of Jenny Calendar asked. “They’ve been bickering now for  _ how _ long?”

   Willow didn’t respond, but Miss Calendar was right. The arguing of the two soldiers was getting on her nerves, too, the hisses and sharp sounds as they tried to keep the noise down. It gave Willow an uneasy feeling of deja vu, though she’d never actually heard these two argue before now. She hadn’t even met Sam until today. Still, it was familiar, bringing to mind uncomfortable sleepovers at Xander’s house. His alcoholic father, his apathetic mother, the constant arguing. When she was a little girl she’d often wished she could just snap her fingers and make them stop, seeing the hell it cost Xander. The only thing she had been able to do was be his safe space…. 

   Until she’d messed that up.   

_ This is what addiction does to people, _ she thought. She felt sick. She hadn’t known about Riley and the suck house until just now. Xander had quietly hissed the story to both her and Giles  after Buffy had left, which explained Buffy’s furious burning of the last suck house they’d come across. Willow was too shocked to even be hurt that Buffy hadn’t told her about it. Riley had succumbed to an addiction, and the whole thing had broken because of  _ that _ .

   After what she’d done to Xander, she’d known that she had a problem and her magic use was getting out of hand, but it hadn’t fully clicked in her mind. Even though she’d always been kind of disgusted by Xander’s mom for not getting herself and Xander away from his dad, there had been a part of her that had resented Tara for leaving her. 

   The two things hadn’t seemed the same until just now. She’d felt like she’d been given an unfair ultimatum and had been abandoned when she’d needed Tara the most. But that wasn’t what had happened. Tara had simply told her how things were going to be. She had given Willow a warning that she was diving into bad things, and that she couldn’t be a part of that. And when Willow hadn’t listened, Tara had sensibly removed herself from the situation. 

   It hadn’t been a punishment, something that was supposed to be reversed after a certain time or once she’d learned her lesson.  _ I’ve been whining after her like she’s a revoked TV privilege I deserve to have back, _ Willow realized.

   “Your sweetie’s not looking real well,” Jenny pointed out. “Look at her. She’s upset.”

   Willow glanced over at Tara, who was pacing back and forth, anxious. Worried. Worried over Dawn. Willow remembered all the times she’d accused everyone, especially Tara, of not caring about Dawn, just because they hadn’t wanted the natural order of things messed around with. That didn’t make them uncaring, just… careful. 

   Willow stood up and pulled some tissues out of her bag before slowly approaching Tara. “Hey. Here,” she said softly, holding them out to the other woman. “It’s going to be okay. Buffy will find Dawn before… anything happens.” She trailed off and tried to smile reassuringly. “It’s going to be okay.”

   “Willow, I…” She shook her head and backed away a little. 

   “I know,” Willow said quietly. “I’m not…. This isn’t about me. Or, or even us. You’re sad, and the only thing I can really do is offer these.” She held out the tissues again. 

   Tara took them, looking at her with an odd, considering expression. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I know it’s strange, worried over a vampire.”

   “It really is,” Jenny said quietly. “Without souls, they’re just killers. I mean, I know. Intimately.”

   But Tara couldn’t hear Jenny, and she went on, “It’s just… she’s so young, you know?”

   “I know,” Willow said. “I’m… I’m starting to know.” Willow hadn’t really met vampire Dawn. She’d seen her the once, when Rack had tried to cast a bid for her or something, but other than that, nothing. She didn’t know what she was like. Xander had been crowing about her, and Tara clearly sort of liked her, and Willow had been considering arranging a proper introduction when the whole thing had blown up in whatever way it blew up. Then suddenly all she knew was that Spike had gone temporarily crazy, and Dawn went to a suck house. (To protect herself? Willow couldn’t get a straight answer from either Spike or Buffy about why she’d left.) And for some reason both Xander and Buffy had decided to leave her there. (She didn’t count Giles, who had thrown up his hands when the other two had said to leave her so long as she wasn’t killing anyone, or Spike, who of course wouldn’t care if there was a free range Dawn-pire on the loose.) “You all really like her.”

   “She was sort of innocent in her bloodlust,” Tara said. “I don’t know how to explain it. Evil seemed to be just a word with her, not any kind of deed. Even when she attacked me, she seemed to do it only because she thought it was the thing to do, not because she was… angry or anything.” She shook her head. “But if she’s lost that innocence, I don’t know what….” She was cut off by a sudden beep, followed by the cessation of arguing behind the shelves. 

   A moment later, Sam came out into the center of the store, her cell phone in hand. “I just got a text from Buffy. ‘Dawn not killing. No staking.’ Is this good news?” 

   “Maybe,” said Jenny with reservation. 

   “That is  _ excellent _ news,” Xander said.

   “Oh thank god,” Tara murmured in relief. 

   But Riley insisted angrily that everything was  _ not _ okay. “That’s not Dawn. It’s a dangerous hostile that  _ attacked _ me. It looks like Dawn, it talks kind of like Dawn, but it’s just an animal. One that needs to be put down.”

   “Y-you stay away from Dawnie!” Tara snapped, surprising Willow. She was awfully assertive, taking a step between Riley and the door. “What happens to, to Dawn is up to Buffy, not you.”

   The look of absolute scorn on Riley’s face made Willow’s fingers practically itch with the desire to cast a spell on him. How dare he look at Tara like that?

   “You,” Riley began.

   “Are absolutely right, Tara,”  Sam cut in, finishing with something Willow was pretty sure Riley hadn’t intended to say. She turned to Riley. “Rye, we don’t have any idea what’s going on here.”

   “I know what’s going on here,” Riley said. 

   “So do I,” said Jenny.

   “Spike’s managed to corrupt all of you.” 

   “That’s certainly true,” Jenny added. 

   Riley shook his head. He looked at Sam and said to her, “I can end this, I’m fine–”

   “You’re not fine,” Samantha started, just as Xander said, “It’s not your place to end  _ anything _ .” 

   Xander stood up, and strangely, for a guy who was a little soft around the edges, whose eyes were still red rimmed and sad from the final break up with his fiancee, whose favorite pastimes weren’t sports or weightlifting but television and Dungeons and Dragons, he suddenly looked a lot stronger than Riley. “Spike didn’t do this,” he said. “He hasn’t corrupted us. I don’t even like the guy. But Riley… we don’t need your permission. This is Buffy’s job, Buffy’s town, and Buffy’s sister. And I, for one, am Buffy’s friend.”

   “And so am I,” Tara said quickly. 

   “Me too!” Willow said quickly. She felt kind of bad about it. Riley seemed utterly betrayed as he looked at her. He’d thought she was on his side. And, well, she had been, but… she had to stand with Xander.

   “Isn’t this the pretty picture of solidarity?” Jenny said with a grin. “Now all we need is Rupert to step into the fray – ah, here he is.” 

   Giles shook his head a bit and frowned. “I’m afraid there’s more at play here than simply choosing to end the existence of a vampire,” he said to Riley. “If there was no other alternative, I’d be in agreement with you. But as things stand…”

   “You tend to make really selfish decisions,” Xander said. “That aren’t exactly the best for Buffy. And I used to go along with it, but you know… not anymore. Buffy doesn’t need you to think for her.”

   Now Riley looked angry. “I never tried to think for her!”

   “Either way, I don’t think we need anything further from you now,” Giles said quietly.

   Riley looked somewhat green, and he shook his head.

   “Are you all right?” Sam asked. 

   “This is making me feel sick,” Riley said. “I’m just… gonna sit down a minute.” He pulled out one of the chairs and sank into it.

   “And you’re not fighting any more vampires tonight!” Sam scolded him. “I promise,” she said, looking up at Xander. “He’s not going anywhere.”

   Everyone visibly relaxed. Tara rubbed her face. If there hadn’t been the break up, Willow would have gone over and put her arm around her, held her closely, held her  _ up _ . Tara often had stress reactions after intense social events. It was funny that she could face vampires and hell gods with more grace and courage than she could a family fight or something, but that was Tara. 

   “Better get her out of here,” Jenny said carefully. “It’s important to show you care.” 

   “Do you want to go home?” Willow asked, rather than put her arm around Tara. “I think the fireworks are over.”

   Tara stared at her. “Willow, I….”

   “It’s okay,” Willow said, and there was a world of forgiveness in those two words. “I get it.”

   Tara swallowed, and to Willow’s surprise, reached forward and hugged her. Hard. Willow gasped, Tara’s smooth cheek against hers, a thrill of remembered eroticism along with the secure comfort of her sweetie, her baby, her own love. Her eyes closed involuntarily and it was all she could do not to turn her head and reach for a kiss. Tara pulled away, and said, “I l….” She swallowed it back, whatever it was. (Was it  _ I love you?  _ Please, goddess, let her mean to have said  _ I love you! _ ) “Later.” 

   Tara fled. 

   Willow could have soared. Except, you know, she wasn’t going to float because no magic. No magic. There was magic enough in a hug. Jenny said something behind her, but Willow couldn’t even hear the ghost, she was so damn happy. She shook off the high and turned back to the others. 

   “Riley, come on, let me take you back to the hospital,” Samantha was saying. 

   “Really, I’m fine. I don’t even feel anything,” Riley said. “Just a little sick. Is it hot in here?”

   “I’m going to make some tea,” Giles announced to no one in particular, and went to the back room where he kept the coffee maker and the hot plate. 

   “Sam, we can’t just leave that animal on the loose,” Riley grumbled. 

   “We can, and we will. Just calm down, Rye. Buffy is the _vampire_ slayer, and this is her territory. What happens to the vampires here is _her_ business, not ours. You yourself said she’s the strongest woman you’ve ever known.”

   “But she’s all… she’s all alone….” Riley said. “She doesn’t… understand….” He retched.

   “Are you okay?” 

   “Yeah,” Riley said. “I just… I know that bitch cracked a rib or something. Just this pressure….” He put his hand on his sternum and grunted, and then shook his head, as if shaking it off. “I’m fine.”

   “Look out,” Jenny said with a mischievous grin. “Things are about to get interesting.”

   Xander suddenly stood up, as if he had heard her. “Oh, god. Sam, get him on the ground.”

   “What?” 

   “I know this. This happened to my uncle, he’s having a heart attack.” 

   Sam snapped her attention to Xander. “What?” 

   “Well, I don’t know,” Xander admitted. “But he could be. He’s got the symptoms, sweating, nausea, and the pressure he just said. I know the government did a bunch of funky things to his heart once.”

   “What?” Sam apparently hadn’t heard about this.

   Xander didn’t waste time giving her a Riley history lesson. “Giles!” he called. “Call nine-one-one! Riley’s heart!”

   “I don’t need to… ahh!” Riley suddenly screamed and clutched at his chest.

   “Get him on the ground, I said!” Xander insisted.

   The next few minutes were flurries of action, as Giles called the ambulance, Sam eased Riley onto the floor and gripped his hand, Xander ran to dig out some aspirin, shouting instructions as he went. And Willow stood feeling like an idiot, because what was she supposed to do? 

   Memories of Riley flipped through her head. She’d encouraged Buffy to date him. She had wanted him to have someone great, because he’d been really sweet, and she’d really, really liked him. Even though she was dating/just getting over Oz, she’d thought Riley deserved someone good, and Buffy deserved someone good, and Willow knew she wasn’t going to be the one for either of them, but wouldn’t it be best to pair them off together? She’d planned it. It had been a  _ plan _ . Willow was always one for plans and rituals and schedules, and what had happened to her plan for Buffy and Riley?

   “Isn’t this always the way?” Jenny said. “Things start to go well, people are happy and together, and then  _ bam _ . Someone loses their soul, or turns into a werewolf, or snaps your neck, and the next thing you know… nothing but badness.” She smiled at Willow. “But, you know, Rupert called the ambulance. I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s not like Buffy still loves the guy.”

   Buffy. Buffy was supposed to love Riley. No, dammit, Buffy  _ had _ loved Riley! Willow remembered how unhappy she’d been when he’d left. She’d been really supportive of Buffy, and promised her that maybe, maybe he’d come back. And he had come back, and she’d been all ready to help him, maybe, you know, at least be friends with Buffy again, or at least remind her what it was like to have a good, normal guy, and not some evil vampire (because Willow knew that was just bad juju, vampires again), and maybe get Buffy to see reason about it. But Buffy hadn’t seen reason, and then Sam had shown up, and Willow had been all ready to hate her, but Sam seemed kinda cool, and now Riley was on the floor suffering from heart failure, or something, because all of Willow’s plans had broken.

   This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. She’d  _ planned it _ . 

   She stared at the man on the ground, feeling sick and numb. There was Giles, talking on the phone about an ambulance, mentioning that there was already extensive scar tissue which might complicate matters with Riley’s heart. There was Xander trying to get an aspirin down Riley’s throat. There was Samantha, telling him he was strong, he’d get through this, but it all seemed very far away. 

_    I  could fix this, _ she thought. Or, make it better, anyway. She didn’t know enough about what was wrong to do more than stabilize him. 

   “Well, there’s nothing I can do,” Jenny said from where she was kneeling by Riley’s side. “Ghosts can’t use magic on this plane.”

   Willow swallowed hard. She had to be strong. She had to be strong…. Oh goddess, he could be dying. Riley might die, and it would be all her fault. No… no, this wasn’t… this was just what happens. The ambulance was coming. Xander knew what to do. It would be okay. Wouldn’t it? Yeah. Yeah, it would.

   And then suddenly Samantha was crying out, “He’s stopped breathing!”

   Xander jumped to do CPR, something he still knew how to do, always stayed certified in, because that was one magic trick it didn’t take magic to do. He’d saved Buffy with it once. Once.

   “You know, that stuff’s nowhere near as effective as television makes it out to be,” Jenny said. “I think the last stats were somewhere between two and twelve percent of CPR patients who make a full recovery. So many get brain damage from being dead so long…. I wonder how long Xander can keep it up? Maybe the ambulance is already at the door?” She looked pointedly outside, then shook her head, as if pronouncing a death sentence. “It’s really too bad. There’s nothing that can be done.”

   A cold certainty passed over Willow, like an ocean wave. “Oh, yes, there  _ is! _ ” she announced, took in a breath, and reached for it.… 

   It was still there. Like it was always there, the magic, the shape of the universe, the pattern of dimensions, the  _ power _ . Oh, it felt so  _ good _ to hold it again. She felt… she felt  _ complete _ . Whole. Like she could….  _ Okay, Willow, keep your head, _ she chided herself. She shaped the magic to her will and slowly, carefully, fed it into Riley….

   Twenty minutes later, she stood alone in the Magic Box, unless she counted the ghost of Jenny Calendar. She was trembling. No one seemed to have noticed they’d left her there alone. No one seemed to have noticed she’d reached for the magic. Riley’s scarred heart had started again, his breathing had returned, the paramedics arrived, Sam went along with him, Giles offered a ride to wait at the hospital, Xander had taken him up on it, and they’d gone out the door probably expecting Willow to come along with them, if they were thinking about it at all. 

   Instead she’d said nothing, just stood, filled silently with magic, while Xander was given praise for saving Riley’s life. But that didn’t matter. Willow never did it for the fame. But… but. It was done now. She tried to let go of the magic, to flush it from her system again, reject it, abandon it (leave herself abandoned by it). 

   No. Why should she have to? She could be careful with it. She knew she could. She….

   “You did good, Willow,” Jenny said, smiling warmly. “You saved a life. Two lives, really.”

   Willow frowned. Two lives?

   “If Riley had died, it would have been Dawn’s fault,” Jenny pointed out. She sighed sadly. “She’s been trying so hard, but I just don’t think it’s possible for a vampire not to kill without a soul. Or maybe one of those chips.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I guess maybe we could ask Riley later if he knows a way to get a chip into her.”

   Willow felt sick at the thought. She may have been a vampire, but Dawn was also a teenage girl. With a chip in her head, she wouldn’t be able to defend herself if some skeevy human wanted to have his way with an underage girl. Like Spike might have… she was still disturbed by that image of the broken bed, and the blood…. No. Also, what good did the chip really do? It hadn’t stopped Spike from taking advantage of Buffy. Rack had known, it hadn’t prevented Spike from being the Big Bad. No. There  _ had _ to be another way. Another way…. 

   Of course, there  _ was  _ another way. The ghost of the woman who had found the other way was smiling at her in triumph. If Willow didn’t know better… she would almost think Miss Calendar was  _ gloating _ .  

   But no. No. Using just a bit of magic to stabilize Riley had been one thing, but the ensoulment curse? That was serious magic. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to give it up again if she opened herself up to those forces. Besides, she’d need help, and no one she knew was willing to go along with it. 

   “I know what you’re thinking,” Jenny said, even though Willow had said nothing since she’d reached for the magic. Nothing at all. “You want to give little Dawnie back her soul, but you’re scared. You’ve learned your lesson, though, haven’t you? Magic is a tool for doing wonderful things, not a crutch to use for every little thing. You can do this.”

   Willow stared down at her hands, thinking of all the things she’d done. She did know better, now. She couldn’t just fling magic at any little thing. But this wasn’t a little thing. It was a very big thing. She swallowed and looked up at Jenny. 

   “I can’t.” They were the first words she’d spoken.

   “You already know you can. You were my  _ best student _ , Willow. I trusted you to take over my class when I couldn’t be there anymore. I trusted you to perform the spell of my people when I couldn’t. I believe in you, Willow. You  _ can _ do this.”

   “I… I’d need help.”

   “Would you?”

   “Yes. Dawn… Dawn’s soul is… is big. I already researched it.” That was the closest word she could come to describing sending out magical feelers through the dimensions, trying to map the way to the spell. Giles was right. Dawn’s soul would take a  _ very _ strong spell to resurrect. And she had no Wine of the Mother to tap, no angelic avatars to sacrifice. Even an ordinary soul would take two other people to perform the ritual. With Dawn’s soul, those two other voices would have to be powerful witches. Rack might be strong enough, but she knew neither Amy nor Tara were, and why would any of them want to do this spell, and why was she even considering this? She should send the magic away, go back, go back, be only Willow again.

   “You don’t need mortal help,” Jenny told her, holding out her hand. “This is why I’m here. I couldn’t tell you until you were ready, but now that you’ve made it through the darkness, you can know. You’re supposed to bring back Dawn’s soul. It’s your destiny. And I can help. Join with me, and you’ll have the power to do the spell on your own.”

   “Join with you?” 

   “I’m not only Jenny Calendar. Well, I am, I am her mind and her self, I know everything she knew. I feel everything she felt. But I am  _ so _ much more. I am older than time. I am stronger than death. I am present in the heart of every child, in the soul of all mankind. I am the seed. I am the power.” Jenny suddenly morphed into… Buffy. 

   “You really don’t understand,” Buffy said with a smile. “I know what strength is. You were my sidekick for years, but you’ve surpassed me now. And that scares me. It scares me so much, I have to go run away to a vampire to protect myself.” 

   The ghost morphed again, into Spike. “And you know what that means, pet? I get what I want. I take it, over and over. Break out the whips and chains, you must have seen the marks on her wrists, you know the things I’m doing to her.” Then he frowned. “But you don’t? She’s not talking to you? Shame. I thought you two were mates.” He smiled. “But then, she told Xander about Riley, and not you. Maybe you were never as close as you thought you were. Maybe she doesn’t know what’s best after all.”

   Willow felt dizzy. The magic was buzzing through her, a swarm of stinging wasps, but the stings felt good, the power of it was hers, she could control it… she could…. Little crackling bolts of lightning arched from her fingers. Was she still standing? Or was she actually a few feet off the ground?

   The ghost morphed again. Glory? “Isn’t power beautiful?” Glory grinned. “I don’t think you could even believe the kinds of power I can give off. There’s no one as fabulous as me, you know, but I’m a really sweet gal. I’m perfectly willing to  _ share! _ What’s the point of it all if you have to just languish alone! It takes power to be powerful. That’s what you need, you know. The kind of power that can take out something like  _ me! _ ” She laughed wickedly, her blonde head thrown back, and when she turned back again, her face was Angel’s. 

   “You really did right, Willow,” he said earnestly. “That spell. That wonderful spell made me a man again. I’d only been a monster. I could be a real person, I could help. I could help Buffy. And Cordelia and Wesley, I can help the helpless. That’s what a soul gives you, the willingness to help. If you can only take the power to do it. You have a soul. Your soul was meant to have this power, meant to make me whole. It was  _ your _ destiny, as much as mine. You know the power of destiny, Willow?” He smiled, that charming smile that had made her think he was right for Buffy. “That’s what makes us more than just someone else’s sidekick.”

   Angel folded in on himself, crouched on the floor, and looked up, this time out of Dawn’s eyes. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” Dawnie whispered, and Willow choked at the terror in her voice. “I’m so scared, Willow. I need you to help me. I’m… I’m lost!” She reached up, following her hands, and as she stood she flowed into Jenny again. 

   “Willow?” Miss Calendar said. “Now, could you help me out? Just take a few classes for me? Here.” She held her hand out again. “Take me inside, and I’ll give you the lesson plan. I know you can do it.” She stepped up to Willow with a smile. “It’s our destiny.”

   Destiny.... It was destiny. She couldn’t just ignore that. Hesitantly, Willow reached out her own hand. They didn’t exactly touch, Jenny was non-corporeal after all, but there was a strange sensation as her hand came into contact with the area Jenny’s did and didn’t occupy. It felt like sex and icecream and fire and madness and laughter and pain and everything in between. It made Willow cry out, as if in ecstasy, but she wasn’t sure she was enjoying it. For one, brief second, Willow felt as if she’d done a terrible, terrible thing. Something truly, utterly,  _ evil _ . 

   Jenny smiled, an almost malevolent expression that was there and gone again before Willow was certain she’d seen it. Then the ghost was gone, and the uncertainty was gone, and the fear was gone. All had been absorbed inside her, opening the floodgates of unimaginable power.

 

 


	44. Cursed

 

 

   Ten minutes after getting back to Melissa’s house, Tara was sitting at the kitchen table, staring into a cup of hot cocoa like it might hold all the answers. It had been a rough night, but it seemed like everything was going to be okay. Dawn had been found and would maybe be coming home, since she hadn’t been killing. And Willow…. Willow had been more like her old self, gentle and kind.

   The front door opened suddenly, pulling Tara from her thoughts as Melissa sailed into the house. Melissa had moved up to Sunnydale from LA to help her grandmother, and had met Tara at the college, where she was taking a few classes. Melissa was back from work. Her long dark hair was sweaty, and her dress showed off the cleavage of her really high end implants. “Oh, cocoa. Any more?” 

“Pitcher,” Tara said, indicating it with her chin.   

   “So. How were your classes today, my little chickadee?” Melissa asked, sitting down across from Tara with her own cup of cocoa.

   “Good. Th-they were good.” Tara looked down at the table, drawing random patterns on the surface with her finger. “I, uh, talked to Willow today.”

   “Oh, honey, is she still trying to pressure you into getting back with her?”

   Tara shook her head. “I was really worried about a friend today. She, she turned out to be okay, but, uh, I was a mess when we didn’t know. Willow tried to comfort me.” She smiled softly at the memory. “There was no pressure. She just wanted to be there for me. I think… I think maybe she finally gets it. Maybe….”

   “She’s seeing you as you again, and not an extension of her?” Melissa took a sip of cocoa and studied her critically. “You’ve been really miserable without her.”

   “I know.” 

   “Didn’t you say she made you feel strong?”

   “She used to,” Tara said. The truth was, she  _ wasn’t _ doing as well away from Willow as she had with her. Her stammer had returned, and she’d stopped speaking up in class, and she didn’t have the confidence she used to have. After getting away from her father, after the Scoobies had helped her stay away, Tara had determined she was never going to let herself be in a position where she was hurt by a loved one again. But… she felt like only half a person without Willow.

   “Are you thinking of going back?”

   “I don’t know,” Tara said. “I shouldn’t want to, but….”

   “But she was good for you, once,” Melissa said. She frowned. “You know, love is a beautiful thing. The kind of love you had, before? With her? I was envious as all hell.”

   Tara looked up, surprised. Melissa was usually more fond of men. 

   “Not of her,” Melissa said. “But of the two of you. I watched you come alive. I would have given… well, various body parts to be loved like that. The way you said she looked after you, even when you got sick?” That was how Tara had described the madness that Glory had induced. “Someone who would stand by you even when things are that hard, that’s rare. That shouldn’t be turned away from. If the problems you were having were based on that drug you said she was on… maybe the real Willow’s coming back now that she’s off it.”

   “You said I was right to leave.”

   “And you were,” Melissa said. “You can’t let her walk all over you or hurt you. You did the right thing getting out. Things were going toxic, and she wasn’t listening. But, if she  _ is _ seeing things more clearly, it might be time to test the waters again. If that’s what you want.” She paused, her eyebrow raised at Tara. “ _ Is _ that what you want?”

   Tara hesitated, and then found herself nodding. She wanted Willow; her own sweet, devoted, sensible Willow back, more than anything in the world.

   “It’s not giving in to just check and see,” Melissa said. “You know what you want. If she’s ready, maybe you can try again.” She shrugged. “Why not just dip a toe in, see how it feels?”

   Tara nodded slowly. She could maybe head back to the Magic Box, see if Willow wanted to go out for a cup of coffee. It wasn’t too late, and the coffee house nearest the campus was open until midnight. A phone call would have been quicker, but if she was going to do this, it should be in person.

   Tara was suddenly all energy. Melissa gave her a quick hug as she headed out the door, and then she was walking back to the Magic Box, different scenarios going through her head. Should she go tentative and unsure? Should she explain the situation over again? Should she ask a dozen questions, mention things about relearning each other, try to be sensible and logical about the whole thing? Or should she do what she really wanted to, which was skip the whole damn drama and just start kissing her, take her back unequivocally, pick up where they left off, no questions asked.  

   Tara was still about a block away from the Magic Box when she started feeling uneasy. It was as if the very air had an aura she could read, and it was sick, and twisted, and broken. Something felt really, really wrong. Every instinct was screaming at her to turn around and flee, but she kept on, forcing herself to go forward through the increasing feelings of dread. She had to keep going.  _ Something _ was there. With Willow and the others. What if they needed help? What if they needed to be rescued? There wasn’t a lot she could do, but she wouldn’t turn away from the danger. 

_ Hold on, Willow, I’m coming, _ she thought as she opened the door. Only to find that  _ Willow _ was the problem. She was sitting cross legged in the air, an Orb of Thessulah floating in front of her as she chanted, three distinct voices coming out of her mouth at the same time, somehow saying different things. Tara recognized those words. She seen them written down in Willow’s own hand. The curse. Oh gods, she was back into magic, and she was using that vile, horrible  _ curse.  _

   Tara tried to call out, to stop her from what she was doing, but then Willow looked at her, and the words dried up in her throat. Oh god. Empty, black voids stared from where Willow’s eyes should have been, and whatever was looking out of them wasn’t Willow. Not anymore. 

   “Willow!” Tara shouted, forcing the word out. The name seemed wrong, a horrible blasphemy against all that was right in the world. But she had to be there. Willow had to still be in there  _ somewhere _ . “Stop this!”

   Willow didn’t answer. She turned her attention back to the Orb and continued to chant, over and over again, words that made Tara’s insides curl. The pinkish orb was starting to grow green. Green light, streaming from inside the orb through cracks that were slowly forming over the crystal.  _ Such pure green energy _ . The words echoed from Tara’s bewildered memory, as she had looked at beautiful Dawnie while Glory’s madness gripped her, and had seen the power of the key within her. 

   It was Dawn. But it wasn’t just a soul, it was the key. Willow was summoning  _ The Key _ , and she had tapped some unspeakable power to do it. The power to open dimensions, the power to summon hell itself.  Willow had chosen to call  _ that _ , and something was helping her do it, something as powerful as Glory, or more, something more powerful than Osiris, more corrosive than a hellgod. Something so evil that it seemed to poison the very air.

   Buffy’s update earlier that night flicked through Tara’s head. Yes, she’d asked after Riley’s burgeoning demon eggs, but she’d also mentioned something about Spike and some bringers. Harbingers. Harbingers of Evil, the First Evil, which had stalked Buffy’s friends before, something so ancient and so terrible and so powerful that it could not even be killed, merely dispelled for a while. What else could give a mere mortal witch the power to summon a dimensional key all on her own?

   Willow couldn’t be in there any more. Whatever she thought she was doing, she’d opened herself up to something so terrible it had to have cost her… cost her…. 

   Horrified and heartsick, Tara turned and fled. 

 

*** 

 

_    Buffy opened her eyes beside Dawn and Spike, the two vampires curled up together, looking peaceful. She felt happy, content. _

_    “How’s it going?” Tara asked suddenly. Buffy turned to find her standing across the chamber, by the door to Dawn’s new room. The half sun seemed to halo her head. Tears streaked her face, but her voice was perfectly calm. _

_    “I can’t tell,” Buffy said. She got up off the bed to go to Tara. She wanted to comfort the young witch, but she couldn’t tell how. “Can I give two answers to that?”  _

_    “Not anymore,” Spike said behind her. She turned. Dawn and Spike were both sitting up on the bed, their chests open, hollow and empty. There was no blood or viscera, just nothing, as if someone had painted them that way. She could see right through the holes, to the wall behind them. “There is always an answer. There’s always a way.”  _

_    The hole in Dawn’s chest started to glow green, an eerie green light spilling out from inside it. “Uh-oh,” she said, looking down. “That’s not supposed to be there.” She reached inside the cavity and pulled out a crackling green ball that slowly turned into a key. “We’d better put that back.” She stood up and went to the door, pushing past Tara, who went and sat down on a fallen tree trunk.  _

_    Buffy’s eyes followed Tara. What was a fallen tree doing in Spike’s chamber? Tara collected some of the long, whippy twigs off the branches and started to weave them into a wreath. “I know what I’m doing,” she said, before Buffy could even ask. “Gotta make something of it. I know how.” _

_    “Buffy! It doesn’t fit!” Dawn cried out. She was trying to shove the green key through the keyhole in the door. It didn’t seem to fit the lock. _

_    “Maybe it’s the wrong size?” Buffy said, trying to come up to help, but her strength wouldn’t force the outsize key into the tiny lock.  _

_    “It’s no use,” Dawn said. “I can’t get in unless someone comes out.” _

_    “Knock,” Spike said behind them.  _

_    “I can’t knock. It’s not fair.” _

_    “Well, I can.” He came up to the door and examined it. Buffy could see the carving through the hole in his chest. He lifted his hand and knocked. _

_    And, very eerily, someone knocked back. “There!” Dawn said. She reached  _ through _ the hole in Spike to take the handle, and the door slid aside, rather than swing open. _

_    For a long moment there was nothing on the other side, just a glowing golden light. Spike went completely rigid. He froze, as if immobile, and slowly, the light faded, and from out of the darkness a figure very slowly came forward. _

_    It was Joyce, frowning worriedly. “Are you sure you two are okay with this?” she asked Spike. _

_    He hesitated, and then said, “I think so.” _

_    “Mom?” Buffy reached through the doorway, but it was like her hand touched a window.  _

_    Joyce lifted her hand and seemed to touch Buffy’s against the glass, but they weren’t really touching. “It’ll be better,” Joyce said. “Since you’re going to stay. Someone should look out for you.”  _

_    “Mom, can you take this?” Dawn asked, holding out the key. Joyce nodded.  _

_    With her hand still through Spike’s torso, Dawn handed over the key, and then closed the door with a sense of finality. As she pulled her hand back through Spike, the hole in him closed up. _

_    But it was as if she’d ripped him open rather than filled him up. Spike screamed, a sound of such excruciating terror it seemed to rip Buffy’s own insides out, and she had to run. She had to run to catch him before he fell.  _

 

   She woke with a start, gasping loud, and it made everyone else in the bed wake, too.

   Spike was as used to Buffy’s nightmares as she was used to his, but Dawn sat up shouting, “Oh, shit!” and Spike grabbed her arm to calm her down. 

   Dawn turned, saw the other person in the bed was Buffy, and sank back down to the pillows. “Damn. I thought for a second I’d killed a vic, passed out next to ‘em.” She turned and put her arm over Buffy, falling right back into near sleep. “You’re warm.”

   Buffy almost laughed. Spike liked that about her, too. “Yeah, that happens when you’re alive.”

   “Mm.” Dawn hummed quietly, her eyes closed. Buffy reached up and stroked a strand of her hair. “How come you never told me about Riley?”

   “You mean what really happened?” Buffy asked. 

   “Mm.” 

   “I don’t know. I didn’t want you to hate him, I think. Just after it happened, I still loved him. I spent a while…” she sighed, “feeling like he was the one who got away. That he left because he was right, and I didn’t need him, and that that was wrong.”

   “He came to the suck house,” Dawn murmured. 

   “I know.”

   “They always come back.”

   “I know.” 

   “Lots of them have really great girlfriends, that’s got nothing to do with it.”

   Buffy chuckled. “I know that now, sweetie.”

   Dawn closed her eyes. “They can be really cruel, some of them,” she said. “We’re all just things to them. That they can use. Pay for and use.”

   Buffy looked to Spike for help, and he just shook his head. There just wasn’t anything to say to that.

   “Maybe I’ll go to medical school,” Dawn said suddenly. 

   That was a big jump. “Excuse me?” 

   “Well, I was thinking, I can taste when the junkies are sick, right? So maybe that would help with diagnostics and stuff. And it’s not as if dead bodies bug me, and there’s pathologists and things. Oh, and I’d be right there when the donor blood expired, so I could just take that stuff, before it hits the black market.”

   “Yeah,” Spike said. “That’s one way you could do it.”

   “Yeah,” Dawn said. “Maybe a pathologist. I could stake any newborns that rise. That’d be fun. But that wouldn’t have me working with living people much.”

   “Would you want that?” Buffy asked. 

   Dawn looked at her. “People are great. They’re warm and snuggly and they taste really good.” She frowned. “And they’re so fragile.”

   “Yes, that’s true,” Buffy said.

   “They’re like the kittens,” Dawn said, and Buffy tried really hard not to laugh. “And the thing is, if we’re so much better than humans, shouldn’t we look after them or something?” She nodded. “Yeah. I could do that. Medical school. Guess I’d have pass algebra first, though.”

   Buffy felt completely helpless, and Spike shook his head again. She was thinking about the future, and it wasn’t one where she was off murdering people. It didn’t matter if it would ever come true. It didn’t matter if she was still basically starting from an evil I’m-better-than-you mindset. She was  _ thinking _ . 

   “That would be a good start,” Buffy whispered.

   Dawn looked up at Buffy. “I beat up Riley.” 

   “I saw.” 

   “Are you mad at me?” 

   Buffy frowned. She’d been wanting to beat up Riley a bit herself the last few months. “Well, if you were human you could be charged with assault.”

   “Well, if Riley was human, he could charged with attempted murder,” Dawn muttered. “He said he was gonna kill Spike.”

   Spike and Buffy looked at each other. 

   “Oh, did he,” Buffy said, her voice like solid stone. 

   After hearing the story, Buffy got up and looked at the remote. It wasn’t labeled well. It would have been nice if there had been big boldly lettered labels saying, “Turn it off” or “This button kills Spike, so don’t press it.” But Xander or Willow might be able to make sense of it, and if they did… it could change everything. 

 

***

 

   “Yes, I want it off,” Spike said. “I don’t see why it’s even a bloody question.”

   Buffy had slid the remote into her pocket, not to keep Spike away from it, but just to… she wasn’t sure. Keep it safe? Dawn was down in her “new room!” in the lower chamber, squeeing over all her old stuff, plus a bunch of new stuff that Spike and Buffy had gotten her for Christmas, and been unable to give her. A cage to breed mice in, for example. (Bonbons, Spike had taken to calling them.) She’d rolled around in joy on her actual bed, and Spike and Buffy went upstairs to have adult talk.

   “At some level, I agree,” Buffy said.

   “Only at some level.” He threw his hands in the air. “Do you trust me or not?”

   “I do,” Buffy said. “I have to. But I’m not the only person in question here.”

   “Oh?”

   “No. Giles, Xander, the only reason anyone is willing to trust you at all is because you have that chip in your head.”

   “You and I both know if I’d wanted to keep killing, I’d have found a way.”

   “I know that, but I think Giles was being willfully blind about the whole thing, and the way he reacted when he heard about Dawn–”

   “Giles has a whole slew of problems which aren’t gonna be solved by mollycoddling his insecurities!” Spike snapped. He took a deep breath. Shouting at each other wasn’t going to solve anything. He perched up on his sarcophagus and reached out for Buffy’s hand. She stood reluctant for a moment, but finally came up and took it. He pulled her closer. “Listen,” he said seriously. “I’m in danger, slayer. It’s not just that I can’t kill, I can’t fight back. If Riley came through those doors right now and decided to stake me, I’d be dust, and there’d be nothing I could do about it.”

   “You know how to defend yourself without being lethal, I’ve seen you.”

   “And Dawn?” he asked. “What about her? What about you, for that matter? What about your precious friends?” He shook his head. “Demons, we’re good. But those fighters who came after Dawn on horseback? I was useless against them. What if it happens again? What if a slayer comes after her? How am I supposed to protect when I can’t  _ fight _ ?”

   “Giles….” Buffy sounded much less sure now. Not that she’d sounded sure to start with. She’d started on the fence. “He won’t accept it. He’s having troubles with you as you are.”

   “Giles regrets a lot of things,” Spike said. “I know. He gets drunk, and he talks. He… encouraged you and Angel, didn’t he. Before the whole soul thing.”

   “He didn’t  _ dis _ courage it.” Buffy closed her eyes. “He thought it poetic.”

   “I know poetry,” Spike said. “He wasn’t wrong. But the most poetic thing about it was his inevitable betrayal. Giles blames himself for it, for his bird’s death, for letting you get mixed up in it. He doesn’t want to make the same mistake again. It’s why he drinks, it’s why he’s closed off. It’s why he was gonna leave. He’s scared.” He brushed the hair out of her face. “You want to know what else is poetic? You, closing the gate when the castle’s already been burnt out. But you’re keeping out the renovators, Buffy. I’m not Angel. You know that, Giles knows that.”

   “If we turn this off, and you go back….”

   “I know you’re scared of history repeating itself, love,” he said. “Believe me, I’ve traded on that fear.”

   Buffy almost smiled.

   “But we both already know you’re stronger than it. Smarter than it.” Spike realized what was happening. She was second guessing herself again. She did that sometimes. Mostly about things that were important to her emotionally. “Okay, love, I’m gonna tell you what to do.”

   “Gee. Thanks.”

   “Hear me out. Before you do anything, you sit back and you ask yourself,  _ How would Buffy feel about this? _ ”

   She looked up. “Okay, that’s… kinda off the point.”

   Spike shook his head. “Nope. It’s exactly the point. It’s what I have to do, all the time, every day. Almost every minute. How would Buffy feel about that? Not Giles, not Xander, not your exes or the world or even the bloody Powers That Be. How does Buffy feel about this damn thing in her lover’s head, making him vulnerable to some jagoff like Riley?”

   She took a long time answering. “She thinks it’s evil.” 

   “Ta, pet,” he said, with an air of  _ finally! _

   “But if you didn’t have it, I wouldn’t have you. If you lose it…”

   “You’re not gonna lose me,” he said, pulling her close.

   “Not even to yourself?” 

   “It’s not a soul,” he said. “It never was. I’m a bad, rude man, who loves to kill things, and loves to break things, and loves to love. I’m still that. I’ll  _ always _ be that. And I’ll always love you.” Buffy’s hand was clenched. Spike lifted it, petted it, pulled it against his chest. “I loved you before it, I’ll love you without it.”

   “You…?” Buffy looked up. “You didn’t.” 

   Spike smiled. “Why do think I was so keen to kill you?” He touched her face. ”Something’s happened to me, with you. You know that. Yeah, chip slowed me down, at first. But I don’t need it. Not anymore. ” She just looked down again, still uncertain. “If you really think I do, Buffy… you shouldn’t be here.”

   “I know that.” 

   “Then what…?”

   “If we don’t read this thing right, it could kill you,” she said, finally confessing the nagging doubt that had been in her head since she’d seen the thing. “Is that worth the risk of getting it out?”

   Spike pulled her against his chest, and suddenly she was squeezing him so tight he grunted with it. 

   “I’ve lost too much, I don’t want to lose you, too.” Buffy closed her eyes tight as she whispered, “I love you, you idiot.” 

   She said that so rarely, the words hurt her so deeply, it was always the weight of a mountain when she risked it. “It’s okay. I love you, too, pet," Spike said, kissing her forehead. “Okay. We’ll be careful, all right? Won’t just dive in head first. Something like this, we’ll make sure we get it sorted before we just start pressing buttons or gouging into my head.”

   Buffy looked up. “You want it completely out?”

   “What if it breaks?” Spike said. He'd never thought he was meant to last with this thing in his head. Most electronics had limited warranties. “Yeah. I want it turned off, and taken out.”

   “Okay.” Buffy took a deep breath. “I think the person best to ask would be Willow. She’s good with computers, maybe she–”

   The door to the crypt banged open and both of them whirled, preparing to fight. But it was only Tara, looking white and shaken and wild eyed, panting with exertion. “Tara, what’s wrong?” Buffy asked, going to her side. 

   “Here, sit down, pet,” Spike said, grabbing his chair and turning it. 

   “No,” Tara panted. “No time. Dawn.” 

   “What about Dawn?” Buffy asked, thinking someone, Samantha maybe, or the rest of Riley’s unit, was about to attack. 

   “Willow. She’s back on the magic, she… she’s started the ensouling curse, she–”

   Tara’s warning was cut off by a bloodcurdling scream from the lower chamber. 

 

 


	45. Key

 

   Dawn was on cloud nine.

   Spike had basically recreated her old room down in the corner of his lower chamber. Her own bed, her own stuffed animals, her books, her journals, her jewelry. Then he’d added other things, little carpet covered monstrosities for the kittens to claw on, a big multi-level cage to breed mice in, a desk for homework. It was without a doubt the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for her. There was only one wall, butted up to the rough cavern edges and modified with some insulation or something, but it had a door, and privacy was a big deal. She knew where the emergency bolt hole was, too, behind the desk.

   None of that by itself really mattered though, compared to what it all  _ meant _ . 

   Spike loved her. He still loved her, even after she’d screwed up so bad, and Buffy had helped with all this, so she seemed to have forgiven her, and the world was – was  _ working! _ She could have crowed. And now that awful chip was going away. No more zapping if he wanted a snack…. Or well, a fresh squeezed animal snack, anyway. No humans, even though they were really tasty, because Buffy wouldn’t like it, and Buffy was part of their family. What hurt her hurt them all. But humans wouldn’t hurt him anymore. He wouldn’t be vulnerable to total sleazeballs like Riley.  

   Maybe Buffy would want to move here, now? It was actually really nice in the crypt. All homey and stuff. Or, or maybe they could all move back into the house, though that seemed kind of a shame with all her stuff moved here. Though it’d be kind of cool if they found somewhere else. They could even travel! Maybe Spike could take them to London for a vacation or something, or maybe… maybe they’d just  _ be _ , together, sire and daughter and sister and boyfriend/girlfriend whatever perfection this was becoming. 

   Dawn grabbed up her journal and flopped down on the bed, turning over on her stomach to try to write something. There were all kinds of thoughts and emotions swirling around, but she was just too happy to corral them into words on paper. She had just decided to let it flow as a stream of gibberish when everything went golden green for a moment. 

   What was…? Where… where was she? Why was she so cold? Colors looked wrong and everything smelled too strong and it was all making her head hurt. Nothing made sense. What was her bed doing in this cavern? Why was she wearing this dress? What was going  _ on _ ? Panic struck at her. The last thing she remembered she’d been bitten and – and the weight of that boy, that boy Janice had wanted her to meet, she remembered that. And then… then….

   She looked down. Diffuse greenish golden light was pouring over her hands from some source… some unknown source… She looked up, and the light moved onto the wall, as if someone had pointed a lamp at it, and… and god… that light was coming from her eyes, from her  _ eyes _ what was…?

   Two layers of memories started to wash over her, lacing through themselves, tangling into her head. She grabbed at it, keeping it from flying away in a million shattered pieces, and squeezed her eyes shut. The light was passing all through her, and it wasn’t light, it was… it was  _ fire _ , it was energy, it was just  _ pain _ as all the memories started to slide back into place. That was it, they’d been shunted aside by… by… and now they were rushing back in, like a wave on the beach. 

   Blood, and hunger, and Janice – oh, god, Janice’s corpse! And Spike… Spike trying to save her. The taste of his blood. The need to go out and kill, kill, wanting to  _ kill _ . And Tara, god, she’d attacked Tara! And Buffy! And she’d been learning, learning how to  _ murder _ people, and it hadn’t bothered her, and, and… and… oh, god, god, god, no, that woman in the alley, and the taste of her blood, and then Spike… Spike’s face… screaming at her… and, and… victim after semi-enthralled victim warm and slowly dying in her arms,  _ no! _

   Her screams made the cavern ring, and she tried to run from the truth of it, but there was nowhere to go. The door burst open as she ran through, screaming still. What had she done, what had she become? She was a  _ vampire! _ She’d been captured and murdered and turned Halloween night, and she was a monster now, and oh, god! God, the things she had done! She recognized Spike’s lower chamber, which was good, and her memories were starting to catch up. Riley. God, Riley, ugh! She remembered how she’d gotten here now, but she still felt sick, and scared, and where… where was Spike?

   To her relief Spike and Buffy came pouring down the ladder, and Dawn flung herself at Spike's chest, sobbing. “Help! Help me, help!”

   “Oh, god,” he breathed. She crumpled to the ground, and he went to his knees with her, holding her so tightly her bones creaked, but she was glad, because she felt she was about to break apart. She was too full, there was too much inside her, and half of her hated the other half, and that second set of green glowing memories were still floating around in her mind, a vicious owl ready to strike down silently in the dark and snatch up the little mouse of a vampire who was screaming in panic in Spike’s arms. 

   “Help me,” she sobbed. “Help, help, I – help!” She found herself scratching at him, trying to gouge her way through to him, dig her way inside and hide from the nightmare of reality. He’d always been there before, to make the nightmares go away when Buffy had been... .

   Someone’s voice was trying to cut through the panic. Her name,  _ Dawn, Dawn _ . “Dawn. Dawn, baby, look at me.”

   “No, no, no.” That was the only word she could find, no, just a negation of all she was and all that had happened and all she remembered.

   The hand on her shoulder was warm and firm and strong, and the voice struck at her. “Dawn!”

   She looked over. “Buffy…?”

   “That’s right.” 

   Seeing her sister dulled the panic, though not the terror. The sobs and the screaming faded, and she sat curled and trembling in Spike’s arms. She shivered as if she was freezing (cold she would never properly feel again in this dead body) and whimpered a little. “I-I’m sorry,” she choked out.

   “It’s okay, Dawnie. Dawn, baby, it’s all okay.”

   “No,” she whimpered. “It’s not. What am I?”

   Buffy glanced at Spike. “Angel couldn’t remember,” she said.

   “At first,” Spike said. “The memories caught up. I remember the first time it happened. Why feel guilt if he couldn’t remember?”

   “But the second time he–”

   “Lied,” Spike said bluntly. “Believe me, pet, the soul catches the memories from the mind in about a minute.”

   “I know what happened,” Dawn whispered. “I was turned, but just… just why? Why? What’s happening? Why do I feel…?”

   “It’s the curse, baby,” Buffy said.

   “I’ve been cursed? Why would anyone curse me? Who would do this to me, I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t, who...?” Then she stopped and looked up at Spike. “Oh, god, I didn’t kill anyone! Oh, god, thank you!” She grabbed him even harder than before. “Thank you, thank you, oh, god.”

   “I know,” Spike whispered. “I knew you wouldn’t want to.”

   She wouldn’t want to. But she  _ had _ wanted to. In some twisted, angry, confused and disgusting way, she  _ still _ wanted to, but she didn’t _ want _ to want to, and that… what did that mean? She finally caught up to what Spike and Buffy had been saying. The soul. The curse. She’d been cursed with a soul. That meant… that meant she was Dawn now, as well as having all the not-Dawn that she had been, which meant she was two people now, more than she had been before with just Dawnbits all mixed up with the demonbits, now she was Dawnbits and demonbits with a Dawn soul tangled up in it, and god, it hurt!

   “It hurts,” she whined.

   “I know,” Buffy said. “I know, baby.”

   “I don’t want to be this,” Dawn said. “I don’t want this, why am I this?”

   “Willow,” said another voice. Dawn looked up, and saw Tara standing by the ladder, white faced and miserable. “Willow, she… she wanted to help you.” 

   “To  _ help _ me?” This wasn’t help, this was hell!

   Tara’s eyes were wet with tears. “She couldn’t understand. She wouldn’t listen, she… it took her.”

   “The magic?” 

   Tara shook her head. “It’s more than magic. It’s… inimical, whatever it is. I think… think it might be that thing you were talking about before. The First Evil. I think… I think it got to Willow.”

   “Why would it want Willow?” Buffy asked. “Why would it want Dawn cursed with a soul?”

   “Well, why’d it go after Angel?” Spike asked.

   Tara and Buffy both stared at him. 

   “Think on it,” Spike said. “It hunted down a vamp with a soul before, and failed with him. A vampire is supposed to be ultimate evil, right? Maybe the soul corrupted gives the Evil power? Or maybe–”

   “Maybe you could ask me,” the air around them said. A moment later Willow seemed to coalesce in the center of the room, swirling into existence like milk in coffee. Dawn cringed away from her instinctively. Or something of her did. Something else surged up stronger and more powerful than it had been before. She’d felt like a scared, lost little girl, dropped suddenly in over her head into a life that didn’t match, but that other part of her, the glowing green owl that had been circling the darkness, struck. 

   She went stiff and rigid in Spike’s arms. The little girl was gone. Even the demon was gone. In their place was a power surge, a lightning storm, a brilliant green sun of energy flicking through her demonic veins like a lightning bolt. Then it was gone again, but Dawn opened her eyes, and listened, as Willow and Buffy faced off, with Tara standing by Buffy’s side.

   “What do you want with my sister?” Buffy was demanding.

   The Power in the body of the witch spouted a lie. Something about innocence and the power of evil and Dawn heard the lie even before her mind could understand the words. “It’s not me,” Dawn said, ignoring the First. “It’s you.”

   The power green of energy coursed through her again, making her tense up as if she’d been shocked. A flash of green light burst through the room, and faded again just as suddenly. Everyone blinked.

   “Buffy? What was that light?”

   It was Xander. He came sliding down the ladder, followed by Giles, and Buffy glared at them. “Get out of here!” she yelled. “And you too, Tara, out!”

   “No,” Tara said. “I c-can’t just leave her like this!”

   Willow smiled. “Sweet Tara. You understood all along, didn’t you? It’s not just magic. It’s  _ power _ .” 

   “It is,” Tara said. “You’re very powerful, sweetie. Now let it go.” She took a step forward. “Please, come on. Just let it go.”

   A tragic look passed over Willow’s face. “I… can’t….” she said, and then her face cleared again. “Don’t you see? This is my destiny.”

   “This is evil!” Buffy shouted at her. “This is what made Angel try to kill me, this is what is behind all the hate and sin and corruption in the world!”

   “And this isn’t you, Willow,” Xander called out. He came up between Buffy and Tara, unafraid even of the black eyed, black haired, sinful cloud of wicked that Willow had become. “You’ve gotta see that. Why don’t you just... take a deep breath, try to look at the situation, and we’ll try and figure it out. All of us. Together, right?”

   “Poor Xander,” Willow said. “Did you think you could talk me down, as if I was on an LSD trip?”

   “More like you’re on a cliff,” Xander said.

   “And she’s going to pull you all down with her,” Buffy snapped. “Xander, take the others and get the hell out.”

   “With all due respect, Buffy, not your call,” Xander said, not taking his eyes off Willow. “This is my friend here.”

   “What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

   “Riley suffered heart failure,” Giles said from behind her. “He was stabilized in the hospital, but we realized once we got there that Willow hadn’t been in the ambulance. We returned to the Magic Box, and it looked as if a cyclone hit it, books stripped of their words, papers and crystals everywhere, and my Orb of Thessulah was shattered. The orb meant either Spike or Dawn. We came here as quickly as we could.”

   “Good, now you can  _ leave _ as quickly as you can!”

   “There’s nowhere to go, Buffy,” Dawn said quietly. “This is the First Evil. It’s everywhere.”

   She peeled herself out of Spike’s arms and made herself stand. Every part of her body hurt. The human body of Dawn Summers had been perfectly molded to hold the power of the Key. The ancient power, forced into the form of a human soul and given as a gift to the slayer to protect. But that body, Dawn’s body, was different now. It had been usurped and corrupted by a demon, and was now made to hold the demon’s essence. Not the soul of the Key. The dead, demonic body was deteriorating under the force of the Key’s energy, corroding and disintegrating, and the shape of the human soul it had worn… even that was fading now. The demon form was eating at it. The Key could feel itself dying, fading, becoming not-Dawn-anymore. Not the Not-Dawn of the demon, but a not-anything-or-anyone.

   But with death came awareness. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said. “I can see it. The dimensions part, and there’s everything. None of us are supposed to be here.  _ You’re _ not supposed to be here.”

   “I am everywhere, in everyone,” the Willow-First said. “I’m done with the whole balancing of Good and Evil. I’m going for a  _ big _ finish now. All I need do is take out  _ you _ .” She said to Buffy.

   “Why the hell are you telling me this?” Buffy asked. “Great big supervillain exposition speech, why?”

   The Willow-First looked confused for a moment, and glanced at Tara, and Xander, and Buffy, and then went hard again. “Why shouldn’t I?” she said. She kept talking, saying something about corruption, and sin, and death, and how there was nothing more powerful. 

   “It’s Willow,” Tara said softly as the creature spoke. “It’s Willow, whatever’s left of Willow, letting it tell us what we need to know. She's why it came here in the first place, to witness the end. It didn't have to. Willow is hoping we'll stop it. She’s… she’s trying to fight it.” 

   “I’m going to feel,” the Willow-First continued, still talking over Tara. “I’m going to come through and be present, be in everything, not just as an echo, but as my  _ self. _ I’m going to wrap my arms around some tender young neck and feel it crack, and then do it again, and again, and nothing is going to stop me.”

   “Just, out of curiosity,” Xander said, his nonchalant voice belying the terror Dawn could smell on him. “What  _ could _ stop you?”

   “Well, the Slayer,” the Willow-First said sweetly. “She stands between me and my reality, the Warrior of Good. But not for long. All I need to do is take you out.”

   “It won’t work,” Dawn said. “You’d need to take out the whole line, destroy every slayer, and every potential slayer on earth. You don’t have the power for it.”

   The Willow-First smiled. “But I already have,” she said. “You, sweet little slayer sister, were made from that same line. When you were cast away by the demon, and your soul was left vulnerable on the heavenly plane, I knew all I had to do was call you back. Just convince the witch to  _ call you back _ .” 

   “But why?” Buffy demanded. 

   “Because when the Key breaks, it will take out the whole line,” Dawn said. “I’ve been inextricably bound by your blood. I’m sorry.”

   Buffy’s face hardened. “You didn’t do it. And you’re not going to die! I’ve saved you once, I can do it again!”

   “No,” Dawn said. “You can’t, not this time. I can’t survive here, not in this body, not anymore. It’s not  _ mine _ anymore. It belongs to the demon.”

   “And when you go… slayers and slayer sisters and potential slayer sisters will drop down dead all over the planet,” the Willow-First said. “It’s inevitable. Evil always prevails.”

   “Evil,” Dawn said coldly, “always lies.” She forced herself to take another step toward the First-Witch. “I can see everything. That’s what I was doing, all vulnerable on the heavenly plane. I was  _ me _ , and I was Dawn, and I was looking out at  _ everything, everywhere. _ And I know you, you so-called  _ First _ . There are so many dimensions where you have been cast out. Over and over again, we cast you out.” 

   “And I return!” 

   “Seeds of you, but not you, not this,” Dawn said. “There’s a world where Buffy is never brought back, where Willow doesn’t slaughter the angel and give you the path of evil to enter into this Earth. There’s a world where Buffy never dies at all, and this, this avatar I have been given, it perishes instead, sending me on to wait in heaven patiently until called forward to open another door. There’s a world where this body is never killed by demons, and you’re forced to find a human consort, a simple human murderer, because no matter how corrupted by power the witch would never accept _ you _ without the grief. There are worlds and worlds, and I can see them.  I am the Key to them. They open before me. I am the Key, and I am all of Dawn at once, and all of them are me.”

   Another shock of green energy bolted through her body, sending it rigid before what was left of Dawn, or the demon Not-Dawn regained control over it. The demon – such a young thing, compared to the soul of the Key – was angry, angry at the witch in front of her, angry at the Evil that had corrupted it, angry, strangely, at being forced into existence in the first place, and cheated of the soul of the Key. It took the DawnKey by the metaphorical hand and gave her the strength to stand before the Evil.

   “There are souls and souls and souls, worlds and worlds, dimension upon dimension. Each world with its own history, its own slayer, its own Buffy, each with their own soul, but not me. I am always the same, in a Dawn body, or in a silent orb of opening. I am everywhere, like you. You come here because you fail to become a real creature, every time you try this. Every time! Every world you try to manifest on, to try and crack your precious necks, you are defeated! And we’ll defeat you now, too!”

_    “Vincire!” _ Giles suddenly shouted. A magic bolt of energy shot from Giles's hand and formed a band around Willow's torso, pinning her arms against her body. 

   Willow looked confused. “What are you…?” She sneered. “It won’t work, watcher.” 

   Giles continued holding out his hand toward her, though it trembled. With a groan, Willow threw back her head and closed her eyes, apparently unconscious. The band of magic holding her, still hovering in the air, slowly faded to a blue-grey color. Giles panted, and sagged. “Thank you, Dawn,” he said, mopping his brow. “You distracted her admirably. I had to do quite a bit to summon that.” 

   “What did you do?” Buffy asked.

   “It’s a sort of stasis,” Giles said. “When I saw what had happened to the books at the Magic Box I assumed… got that spell ready. I wish I’d had time to call some friends of mine, maybe borrowed some power, because that will not hold her long at all.”

   “How long?”

   Giles shrugged. “Ten minutes? Fifteen? Help her,” he added, as Dawn’s knees buckled under her. 

   Buffy caught her arm, and Spike was suddenly on her other arm, and then Tara and Xander were standing behind her, lending their support on her shoulders, and even Giles strode forward, and placed his hands on them, joining in the united front. All of them were still sort of angled towards Willow, though. None of them trusted Giles’s spell. 

   “Dawn?” Buffy asked. “You said you know this thing. What do we do?”  

   Dawn was drawing a blank suddenly. There were three, maybe even four of her all rattling for supremacy in a body not meant for any of it. There was the mindless ancient Key, and the human soul, and the demonic creature, and the twisted braid of all of them that made almost no sense at all. It was the Key who had seen every possible world, but it was the soul shape of Dawn that could process the truth of what the Key knew, and strangely, it was the demon who forced the two to work together, dammit! Because if she could make sense of good and evil and right and wrong and human and demon, then the goddamn Key could just learn to give a shit for once, and let the damn soul figure it out!

   “Sacrifice,” Dawn said finally. “That’s what defeats it, always, sacrifice.”

   “Well, that’s easy,” Buffy said. She stood up. “How do I do it?”

   “No!” Spike shouted.

   “Won’t work,” Dawn said. “You’re good, you’re obvious. You’re  _ expected _ to sacrifice yourself, it’s what you were built to do. The death of the sacrificial lamb does nothing to defeat the evil. The lamb wasn’t part of the evil. It… it has to be the soul of the priest.”

   “What are you saying?”

   “Different worlds,” Dawn said. “Different times. It takes an evil soul made good to defeat the Evil. There are worlds where Spike’s done it,” she said, looking over at her sire. “Lots of them. But….”

   “I don’t have a soul.”

   “Not here,” Dawn said. “You couldn’t do it here, now. Angel’s done it a few times. Not on many worlds, but it’s happened. There are times when you’ve managed it, Buffy, but you went very dark before you turned back, darker than Faith even, darker than sin. You never got that dark here. There were worlds where Faith has done it. But that’s the thing, if it’s… it’s half assed or selfish, it only makes it stronger. That’s why it wanted Angel back, he’d been corrupted once already, he was weak. If he’d gone full corruption, the First would have been able to manifest in  _ him _ . The scales. Tip the scales away from evil. The evil can’t just become, or  _ act  _ good. It has to  _ sacrifice _ itself to good.”

   The realization of what she was saying finally hit her. “It has to be me.”

   A least three voices shouted “No!” at her, and Dawn closed her eyes. “I can do this,” she said. “I can.”

   “No!” Buffy said again. “It just said, if you die, the whole slayer line goes with you, and the First is completely free!”

   “Not when I die.  _ When the Key breaks _ ,” Dawn said. “Not this body. Not the shape of this soul. The Key.” She couldn’t stop herself from crying. Another bolt of green energy crackled through her. It was going to be ridiculously easy, too. All she had to do was just stop holding it. “I’ll still be the Key. The energy will wander. I just… won’t be me anymore.” She swallowed. “I just have to disperse. Let the energy take the soul away.”

   “Dawn!” Spike sounded like she’d stabbed him. 

   “Yes,” she confirmed. “The demon goes, too. I’m sorry. We’re bound now. I’m all right with it.  _ All _ of me is all right with it.” She forced herself to her feet, and took hold of Buffy’s hand. “I’m sorry. This is my tower, Buffy. You can’t do it this time.”

   “No.…”

   Dawn kissed Buffy’s cheek, but Buffy was crying too hard to kiss her back. She just grabbed her hard and held her harder, and after a moment Dawn made her let her go. She turned to Spike, who bent and kissed her forehead, soft, lingering. His forehead was clenched, and he was too choked up to speak. He’d said it all, anyway. So had Buffy. Anything she said would sound like goodbye, anyway. Dawn hated goodbye.

   She stepped away, backwards, looking back on Buffy and Spike and Xander and Giles and… 

   “Tara?”

   Tara wasn’t standing with the others anymore.

 

 


	46. Sacrifice

 

 

Tara had listened to what Dawn was saying. It all made sense, dimensions, corruption, Keys, sacrifice. The evil has to sacrifice itself to good. It had been clear to Dawn and Buffy and everyone in their little circle that one of them would have to sacrifice themselves. But Tara knew, the moment that Dawn said she’d have to be the sacrifice, that she couldn’t be. 

   Dawnie, vampire Dawnie, had claimed she was evil, reveled in her supposed evil, but she was an innocent, dammit, even with the urge to kill. Sacrificing herself would do  _ nothing _ to save the world from the First Evil. It would thwart that one plan – the whole slayer line dead in one fell swoop as the Key dissolved. But it wouldn’t defeat the First, and send its manifestation from the world.

They’d have to do this all over again. Just like Buffy had to do this all over again when she’d “defeated” it the first time around, with Angel. Someone would eventually have to be sacrificed again. Maybe Spike, maybe Angel, maybe Faith. The First would start smaller next time, kill the slayers and the potentials one by one, maybe get help, raise an army of some kind instead of slowly corrupt the (to be very frank) most powerful witch on the planet.

   That corruption could maybe be used against it. They had someone who had been seduced into evil, floating right in the chamber with them. Tara had watched as Willow had sunk slowly deeper and deeper into evil. With all the best intentions, with the goal to save lives, or help people, and eventually just to play, and then to shape things and people to her will, Willow had been seduced, now whole and entire, to evil. But there was still the core of a good person inside, Tara  _ knew _ that. As surely as she knew the core of Dawn was still held within the young demon she knew, as she had come to understand the core of moral and loving William was still inside the vampire Spike, Tara knew Willow in all her darkness and corruption had come from a kernel of goodness and kindness and purity. All she had to do was reach it….

   Tara slowly approached the First. Willow’s core was still there. She could see her, the redhead’s aura partially melded with the dark  _ thing _ she’d let inside, twisted and dark and slimy, pulsing with greed, with dismissal, with sharp, razor edged threads, like a spider’s web of piano wire. But some of it, hiding in the twisted maelstrom of corruption, was clear, refusing to mix with the other like water with oil. 

   She reached out to gently touch Willow’s cheek. Giles’ spell buzzed at Tara’s touch. Even the small vibration she’d caused was breaking it, tiny cracks making the stasis spell weaker, smaller, less powerful. She could not linger. Fortunately, minds spoke faster than words could. 

   She opened her mind to listen, opened a channel in Willow so she could reach out. Willow had always been better at this spell, but Tara knew how to do it, if only with another witch who could complete the connection. If Willow wanted, she could reinforce Tara’s mindlink, make it work. For a moment, Tara was afraid she was reaching for what wasn’t there. Or for what didn’t want her…. That doubt had been strong. From the beginning, Tara had always had it.  _ If Willow had wanted me, if Willow had cared, if Willow had truly loved, then I would have mattered more than the magic.  _ She knew that wasn’t how addiction worked… but it still sowed that seed of doubt.  _ I’m not enough. She doesn’t really love me…. _

_    “Tara?” _ a small, scared voice whispered in her mind. Tara gasped, trembling with horror and relief. Part of her had almost hoped she wouldn’t be able to reach her. If Willow wouldn’t listen… then whatever happened next wouldn’t be Tara’s fault…. But she had. The love was there, and Willow’s soul was there, so confused and twisted it didn’t know where to turn. “ _ Oh, gods, Tara, I was trying…. I didn’t mean…. Riley was dying, and Dawn was dead, and I didn’t mean…. Oh, goddess. What have I done?” _

    “ _ You gave in to evil, sweetie,” _ Tara thought back with both velvet and steel. “ _ And you’ve hurt Dawnie. Real bad.” _

    “ _ I didn’t mean to! I just… I just wanted to make things better. I wanted to help.”  _

_     “There were things we didn’t understand,” _ Tara told her. “ _ Things about the Key, about good and evil.” _

_     “It was Buffy.”  _ The realization was slicing at Willow’s mind, making her writhe. “ _ It was the slayer, there are forces that surround her, that make every act inhuman. One side good, one side evil. You can’t grow around something like that without every single act being part of the game!” _ Tears gathered in her immobile eyes. “ _ I didn’t realize I was a player piece. I just thought I was me.” _

_     “I know.”  _ Tara was heartsick over it. “ _ It’s hard to realize that everything you do has consequences, not just for yourself, and not just for the people around you. For the world.” _

_     “This wasn’t what I wanted when I wanted power.”  _ Random shrieks of corruption twisted in Willow’s mind, and made Tara wince. 

    The First was fighting back. It had heard Tara, sliding in behind it, peering through the back door of its avatar. It was not going to let her stay there long. Willow’s mind cut through the interference, but she wasn’t going to have the strength for long. Ironically, Giles spell was actually making Willow weaker, while it only held the First immobile. 

    “ _ I only wanted to help!”  _ There was a pause after Willow’s declaration, and then a hysterical giggle flowed through Tara’s mind. “ _ The road to hell. It really  _ is  _ paved with good intentions, isn’t it?” _

    Tara’s gut clenched. She was in the same space, now that she’d reached for Willow. “ _ It can be. But there’s something you can do this time. A way to fix it.” _ Her heart ached over what she was about to suggest, but it was the only way to save Dawn. And Willow. “ _ Do you want to stop this?” _

_     “Oh, so much! Goddess, let’s go back to the way things were!” _ The memory of it surfaced, some morning on the beach more than a year ago, before Glory, before death, before pain and addiction and confusion. Buffy and Riley playing football by the shore. Xander and Anya curled up in the sand. Willow twisted up against Tara, just a touch of magic to start the barbecue. Nothing dangerous, nothing scary, nothing out of the ordinary, all vampires safely gone away or evil, all Powers believed to be good, all evil carefully confined to easily identified demons and bad guys. There was even a memory of Dawn, possibly only implanted, but there, splashing in the water, laughing in the sunlight as she danced with the waves. It was beautiful. It was perfect. And it was past. 

   That was almost always what Willow was trying to do with her magic. Catch something that was past, force something better, make it the way she remembered it being. Even Riley was a way of giving Buffy back a lover like Angel had been, but better and cleaner. Willow didn’t like anything to end, or change. It was why she’d had so much trouble telling her friends about Tara – Tara had meant change, had meant moving on from Oz, had meant being  _ different _ . But without change… nothing could ever grow.

_“We can’t go back,”_ Tara reminded her, a truth Willow already knew. _“But you can save everyone if that’s really what you want. You can help Dawn._ _You can end this.”_

_    “How? _ ”

   Tara hated to say it, but she had to. She had to. “ _ If, if evil sacrifices itself to good.”  _ Tears were running down her cheeks, and she knew she never would have been able to say those words out loud. They would have choked her. “ _ If it gives of itself, if it abandons itself, that’s what defeats this evil.” _ She knew the truth of it was stark in her mind. It was possible to be wrong, but it was impossible to lie this close to one’s own self. 

   Silence in her mind. This was the precarious moment, when Willow could go either way; she could listen. Or she could harden, thrust Tara out, let the First take over even this thread of communication. Tara steeled herself for a long moment, half expecting the harsh thoughts of her lover to cut her off with a vindictive _ Why should I? _

   But then, there, the tiniest trickle of thought from Willow. “ _ I’m scared.” _

   Tara nearly sobbed. The moment was over. Willow had already chosen. “ _ I know, baby.” _ The tears wouldn’t stop. Willow really had tried to do good. She’d just gotten lost on the way. She’d taken a wrong turn and had found herself mired in evil. She should have had a chance to get out of it in a way that let her live her life, but that wasn’t going to happen. She had to sacrifice herself, to go alone into the terrifying uncertainty of whatever came next.

   Alone…. Fear and a sense of rightness battled inside of Tara, churning and making her feel sick. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair, that Willow should face this alone. Everything Willow had ever done had been taking the wrong path toward a summit, only to find herself in a ravine. She’d been  _ trying _ to work toward good. It wasn’t fair that she’d fall alone. 

   What Tara was thinking… it felt inevitable. Like it was meant to a be, a rock in the river of destiny that couldn’t be moved or even navigated around. Maybe it was the price nature had negotiated for bringing Buffy back in the first place, a balance of life for life. Or maybe it was just fate.

_    Are you ready for this? _ she asked herself. And really… she was. She had been ready, even since the beginning, from the moment she’d gone to find Willow with a pitiful spell in hand, trying to stop an evil force that she already knew was too strong for her to defeat alone. Willow had opened the world, opened her heart, made everything real and powerful and true. She’d made Tara strong. She had made her… complete. 

   And she’d never be complete again. She’d be all right, if she lost Willow forever, but there would always be this piece missing. Tara didn’t want to live with that hole in her life. Not when she could help. 

   “ _ You don’t need to be scared,” _ she thought to Willow. She heard voices, demanding to know what she was doing, telling her to get away from the First, but she ignored them. It didn’t matter. All that mattered right now was her and Willow. “ _ Because you won’t be alone. I’ll go with you.” _

   “ _ No, Tara, you can’t!” _

_    “Yes, I can. It’s my choice, and I’m making it. You make me complete.”  _ She wrapped her arms around Willow’s immobile form. “ _ We’ll go together, like we’re meant to be. See where the wind takes us.” _

_    “But… what if it takes us different directions?” _

Good, evil, heaven, hell. It was possible. They could be called to different places, even if they left together. Unless she did something about it. 

This was a spell Tara knew. It was one they’d done before, a dozen times, starting from their earliest  _ practice sessions _ , which were erotically magical dates and they’d both known it at the time, even if they’d pretended it was only learning magic. She forced her magic out, took with it her strength, her soul, and held them all out for Willow. 

   “We won’t let that happen,” she whispered through her tears.

   With a silent flicker, Giles’ spell died, and evil flared around them, the caustic smell of ozone frying the air. Black clouds gathered as the First Evil appeared around the two of them in the image of a twisted, red-skinned demon, boiling out of the ether, its voice still gathering to blast out of Willow’s throat, claim the planet for darkness.

   And silently, in the middle of the roiling blackness, two quiet souls stood within two mortal bodies, staring into each other’s eyes. Reaching out. 

Tara’s own power was a tiny pale flicker of a candle flame compared to Willow’s roiling red sun, but when Willow let herself reach out, Tara did not feel diminished, or lost. Only… finished. 

   “You know the path to bring a soul to Earth,” Tara said with a soft smile. “We’ll walk it the other way. Just open the gateway. Come on. You know the path.” She laced Willow’s fingers through hers. “It has to be us.” 

   The warmth of Willow’s essence twined with her own flared brighter. Before the baleful creature could seize Willow’s body again, the young witch smiled, and spoke, one more time. “I’ve always wanted to make you fly,” the beloved voice whispered. They kissed, but only briefly. There wasn’t time for anything more. Willow pulled away, looked past Tara at Xander, and the others, and then….

   Then there was a horrible wrenching and tearing. Tara was falling, but Willow was there, and they held each other up as the world started to dissolve away. And what took its place…. It was so beautiful. There was no more fear. There was only joy as she and Willow, joined together, swirled away from the tether of mortal life.

 

***

 

“No!”

Xander had been held back by… he didn’t even know what. The sinister influence of the First, the power of Giles’ spell, he hated to think it was fear. He’d tried to jump forward, to save Willow, to save Tara  _ for _ Willow if Willow couldn’t be saved, to do  _ anything  _ other than sit there, the useless, boring human man who knew nothing, and could do nothing, and so didn’t help anything. He’d struck what felt like a rubber wall and had been fighting to get through it since just after Tara had left their circle. He cursed himself for not holding onto the witch, not protecting her, not guessing what she was about to do. Willow would never forgive him if he let something happen to Tara!

He wouldn’t let himself think about something happening to Willow. 

The two witches had only stood and looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment, and Xander tried to shout them down, call Tara back, something. Anything. But just at the end there, as the demonic shape roared and grew above them, as the air scorched with evil, as everything seemed about to explode in a burst of horror, the two young women had murmured to each other, and Xander, halfway through the cloying treacle of power surrounding them, heard them. 

This was planned. This was what they were trying to do. _ Just open the gate. It has to be us. I always wanted to make you fly. _

    He already sort of knew what they were planning to do. 

    They kissed, and then Willow had spared one glance up, her eyes meeting Xander’s with a surety he could not deny. This was not an accident. This was not the First destroying them. This was Willow, and she meant it. She could only spare Xander one last loving look, but she had spared it, and it was real. Best friends. A love as strong and real as the one she was sacrificing herself with. Really, it was him she was sacrificing herself  _ for _ , and Buffy, and Dawn, and everyone. So they could continue. 

    As the wicked laughter began to swell in the air above them all, Willow’s head fell back, and Tara’s, and the two of them dropped, twin marionettes whose strings had been cut.

“No!” 

Xander’s desperate cry was echoed by another one, dark and malevolent, as the demonic specter that had dominated the room burst like a firework, but silently and beautifully, swirling and fading into nothingness. Then it was gone, only the echo of the scent of ozone to show that it had been there at all.

And two still figures fallen in the center of the room. 

Xander plunged forward, the wall of force that had held him back gone. He collapsed to his knees as he reached for Willow, but he already knew what he’d find when he got to her. She was still warm, still flush, but he knew she was dead. He sat in shock for a moment, and then automatically started going through the motions, breath, chest compressions, one, two, three. It had worked before! But even as he played the stupid game, he knew this time it was different. He could bring Buffy back. He had even held Riley for as long as he could. But not this time.

Giles tried to help him, but even as Xander worked on Willow and Giles addressed Tara, the two men looked over at each other and could read the despair in each other’s eyes. Giles didn’t try to stop Xander, but Xander could read the hopelessness in his face. Finally Xander stopped the game, sat back, his eyes filling with tears, and Giles ended with him.

“I heard them,” Xander whispered. “They’re not coming back. They’d already decided.” He looked up. “They flew away.”

Giles nodded, and Xander knew he’d already known. His face crumpled. First Jesse… then Buffy... then Dawn. Now Willow. How many people did he have to lose? How was he going to tell Willow’s parents? How could he explain what it was that she had done? 

How the hell was he going to live without her? 

Giles had his hand on Xander’s shoulder, but Xander couldn’t even feel it. He held Willow’s still hand in his, overwhelmed by the moment. His tear filled eyes were fixed on his lifelong best friend, her face calm and peaceful, her body unblemished, her other hand entwined with her lover’s.

He was so proud of both of them, but god in heaven, how many times did he have to go through this? Why did he always end up as the one left behind to pick up the pieces? Going out in a blaze of glory seemed so much easier than dealing with the aftermath. The daily slog of just… keep… going. It was as if that was his superpower, dammit. And he hated it as much as Buffy hated hers.

He was drowned in grief. So drowned he almost didn’t notice when Dawn, who had been standing, watching them all in shock, collapsed in another flare of brilliant green light.   


 


	47. Ensouled

 

“Dawn!” Spike cried out and lunged for her, faster than a human could move. They’d all been a bit bewildered by the actions of the two witches, but none of that mattered now. He’d sort of thought Tara and Willow’s actions had erased the whole thing Dawn had been talking about with the soul and the key and whatall, but it seemed whatever was going on with Dawn… it was still going on. 

    He caught her before she hit the ground, and another flash of green light shot from her eyes, sending her rigid. He pulled her into his lap until the fit, or whatever it was, ended. 

“No,” Dawn whispered hoarsely. “No, no, not them. Not them! It was supposed to be me!”

“Tara said it couldn’t, pet,” Spike said, smoothing back her hair. He’d heard everything the two witches had murmured aloud. Gone now, the two birds flown away together. He’d miss them, even Willow, but the romantic in him found it all fairly touching. And they’d saved Dawn, right? They’d saved her, and she was going to be okay now, right? “She said they had to do it. Now you’re gonna be okay, yeah? You’ll settle into it, you’ll get used to it. Angel was fine with it, he settled in, he–” 

“Spike,” Buffy said, dropping to her knees beside them. “You heard her, it’s not just the soul. It’s the Key. It can’t survive in demonic form.”

“No!” he insisted. He wouldn’t believe it. He  _ couldn’t _ believe it. “No, all we need to do is strengthen her, that’s all. Set it up, get a spell going. Giles!” He shouted behind him. Where was that sorry sod when you needed him? “Giles! Where’s that stasis spell? If it worked on Red, it’ll work here, we can make it–”

“I can’t,” Giles said, coming up behind. “It was keyed to Willow, I’d been building it since I left the Magic Box. And it wouldn’t do for this, anyway. It’s not meant to contain this kind of power.” He sighed, looking helpless. “And I haven’t the strength.”

“Then what good are you!” Spike shouted at him. Bloody watcher, couldn’t he do more than just watch? 

“Not much,” Giles said quietly. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell everyone.”

Giles’s crisis of faith wasn’t important right now, not with the niblet going rigid and tense in his arms. What could he do? What did they know? “The blood,” Spike snapped. “The Key was supposed to come out with her blood, right? For Glory, open up that damn hellgate? What if we drain her? What if we bleed it out of her, we can, can…”

“You can’t resire this away, Spike,” Dawn said gently. “It’s in the soul, not the blood. That’s the point. When… when I was human, that’s what that body was built for. It’s not the same blood anymore, not the same body.” She reached up and touched his pale cheek. “Not now that I’m  _ your _ daughter.”

Spike’s hands clenched behind Dawn’s back, and he roared at the ceiling. “Gaah!” He refused to give up. “I am  _ not _ going to be too late again! There is always an answer. There’s always a way!” 

Buffy got a curious look on her face at his words. She frowned, then looked down at her sister. “Dawn?” she asked, sounding much calmer than Spike thought she had any right to be. But then, Slayer, apocalypse, she was good at these. “Can you be a key? Can you open doors between dimensions?”

“No,” Dawn said. Then she stopped. “Sort of. Nothing like what Glory did, not unless I… I disperse first. And then… then I’d have no reason to. If I don’t have the shape of the soul, I’m just a key, no mind or will or anything, and then… then I’d… I’d need someone to wield me. So, not really.” 

“Not really, but sort of? What do you mean?”

“R-right now?” Dawn said. “Nothing physical. I-I could open a gate for energy, or magic, but not a person. I couldn’t go someplace where I’m more stable.”

“Could you send a soul?”

“Well… yes,” Dawn said. “I’m… going….” She gasped and another flash of light came from her as she went stiff in Spike’s arms. He held her more tightly until it was over, and she panted. “I’m going to have to in a minute,” she said. “Or the key will break, too. And even without the First here to benefit… that’s…” she chuckled. “That would be bad mojo.”

“Couldn’t you just open a gate and send your soul, with all its keyness, back to heaven?” Buffy said.

Dawn shook her head. “Doesn’t work like that. I can unlock a door, but I can’t open it. The door to heaven only opens when a soul comes or goes, and the only way this soul would leave this body without… without destroying me… the body, the demon, me. The only way it would leave is….”

“Perfect happiness,” Buffy said. 

“Bloody hell,” Spike swore. How the hell could the niblet find perfect happiness in less than ten minutes with the hell her life had been, her body in pain, and two of her best friends dead in her own home, sacrificed at her own word?

“Can you open the gate, to call down another soul?” Buffy asked.

“What good would that do?” he demanded. Have her look at all the happy little souls and hope it rubbed off on her? Was more like to make her sad that she wasn’t there.

“Perfect happiness,” Buffy said. “Even a second of it, even if it only brushes her as it goes through her.” She looked up at Spike. “As it goes through you.” 

“What?”

“That dream I had, before Tara showed up, before this all went down.”

“A slayer dream?” Spike asked. He knew already that those were rare, and not always easy to differentiate from ordinary dreams, but at the same time… he knew about visions. A century with Drusilla, he’d learned not to dismiss them. And, damn, any straw in a flood. Dawn convulsed in his arms again, nearly blinding them all with another green flash. “What did it say?”

“She needed you to knock on the door, she wouldn’t, or couldn’t do it herself. Someone knocked back,” she said. “And then, then she reached through you to open it. If she can do what Willow did, if she can open a gate, call another soul–”

“Without an Orb of Thessulah?” Giles asked. 

“You said it was for holding a soul, not opening the path to one,” Buffy said. “We don’t need to hold it, and then send it on. The vessel for it is  _ here _ .” She held Spike’s eyes with hers. “If he’s okay with that.”

Spike suddenly realized what she was saying. A soul… the errant thought that had been tickling at the back of his head for over a year now, the plan that he’d actually gone so far as to research before dismissing again and again. He’d run the gamut between wanting one desperately, and never wanting one at all, and every shade in between, sometimes several times in a day. Sometimes several times in an hour, now that he’d been trying to be good for Buffy. Being not quite human enough hadn’t seemed… quite good enough for her. 

“How… how would that work?” Dawn asked. “You don’t know heaven, Buffy, it….”

“Yes,” Buffy said quietly. “I do.” She looked up, over Spike’s head, meeting the gazes of Giles, and Xander who had left the fallen witches to see what he could do for his other friends. “That’s where I was,” she told them. “In heaven. That’s what I knew, peace, and love, and perfect, perfect happiness. If we can call down a soul, if you can hold it, for even a moment, Dawnie, it’ll break the curse.”

“But any soul that comes down… it’ll be furious,” Dawn said. “We couldn’t. It wouldn’t work.” 

“Not if it agrees,” Spike said quietly. The man he had been.... Well, even with a demon in place of a soul, he’d always been one to do whatever he could for those he loved.

Dawn looked up at him, her blue eyes shining. “Why should it?” 

“I’ll ask.” He gazed down at her. Knock on the door, Buffy had said. “Can you use my blood?” he asked. “It’s in you. Can you use it to track down old William? Can you link me up with him at all?”

Dawn hesitated, and then nodded. “Yes.” She looked over at Buffy. “I love you,” she whispered to her. Then she made herself sit up. She took hold of Spike’s head and kissed him, full on the mouth. It wasn’t sexual, but it was very heartfelt.  

    Green spears shot through his skull, painful as the chip, but even more powerful. He knew he was still in his own head, but it was as if it had exploded to encompass half the universe. Was this what Dawn was feeling? This was beyond anything mortal, anything demonic, even.  _ This _ was his niblet? Bloody hell, he was in awe. 

    The infinity of it seemed to shrink, and settle, and zoom in on a white light, then a roaring. Spike had no idea what was happening. Whatever was going on was clearly far beyond his comprehension, and everything went black. Not even black, but it was the closest he could come to understanding the empty that he was suddenly in. 

    He’d been expecting something different. He’d been expecting something more human, less direct, something more detailed. He’d thought he’d see the man he was, diffident and nervous, glasses perched on his nose. He’d thought it would be a dialogue. He’d planned on using persuasion, on reminding old William that the promise of something glowing had essentially been denied him, that Drusilla had cheated him by sending him on and stealing his body for the demon Spike was now. He’d been going to tell him all about the things he could do, the kind of life he could live, but it wasn’t going to be anything so mundane and human. It was something deeper and more pure than all of those empty promises. 

    Within the nothing that was also everything, the plane that the demon alone couldn’t even comprehend, there was something. Not a man, not a person, just an  _ other _ . It didn’t touch him, but he could hear it. Without any word, he heard it asking: 

_     Why? _

    Spike didn’t know if it was a voice or a concept. He didn’t know if it was Dawn or God or the universe, or even something else entirely. He hoped it was working. He hoped it was only William.

    And he couldn’t answer why. He was in a space beyond such hollow words. He could only be what he was, once William the Bloody, now only Spike. Once a murderous demon, the Slayer of Slayers, now a warrior alongside the righteous. Once, despite his unequal love affair with a madwoman, essentially alone. Now bound to the glorious Slayer, and father to an exquisite fledgeling, whom he would give his life for, let alone his soul. If he had had such a thing.

    And that was the answer to why.

_     Love _ . 

    It seemed to be the right answer.

_     There’s always an answer. There’s always a way. _ Something snapped, as if a rubber band had broken, and for one glorious second – oh, God! – golden light pierced him, and he felt… he felt… such peace, such contentment, such absolute joy, and all memory of everything vanished completely. He was nothing, he had no form, no place, he was just clear and free and  _ finished _ . Then a green energy rushed through the gold, as if he’d been hit by a train that somehow went through all his being and left him staggering on the track behind it. And it left behind a single concept. Love, yes, but also gratitude within it. 

_     Thank you! _

And then it was gone. And the joy was gone, and the light was also gone. William opened his eyes in sudden terror. A second ago he’d been… been frightened by… who was that woman, claiming he’d burning baby fish swimming round his head, that woman he’d… let… touch him?

He looked up, and he knew his eyes showed his terror, because the young woman in the strange clothes before him gripped his shoulders and said, “Just hang on. It’ll be okay, just hang on for one minute.” 

He didn’t know what the word  _ okay _ even meant, but the determination in that woman’s voice was not to be denied. He glanced down. A child was asleep, or unconscious, in his arms. A young girl, or very young woman, really, pale, slender. Poor thing. What….

The memories started to come back. Rising… clawing through wood… rising from the earth… from a  _ grave _ , from –

“Don’t. Move,” the woman said. “Just look into my eyes. It’ll be horrible until you get to the end. Just don’t move.”

Panic was starting to blossom in his chest as memories, truths, horrible realizations began to rush him all at once.

“Why…?” 

“You don’t want to frighten her,” the woman said, glancing at the child in his arms. She was stirring. She looked like she was about to awaken… that was good, she’d been frighteningly cold, he’d been afraid… he’d killed her… because he had killed… he had killed….

    “Oh, god!” he whispered.

    But she was right. No matter what was happening to him, he had no business frightening the girl, whose eyes opened blue and shining and stared at him with such love he instinctively held her tighter. He would not let himself scream, not with those innocent eyes weighing him down. She didn’t deserve that. He held himself rigid, panting slightly, staring into the green eyes of the determined blonde woman before him. Those eyes were not innocent. They were powerful. She held his shoulders so tightly he felt they should rip his arms right out of their sockets, but he was glad of it, because god… this was hell itself opening into his head! 

    He gasped when the memories caught up enough that he remembered who this woman was – the Slayer. Then Buffy. Then his love. Then… then  _ his _ . Or more like he was  _ hers _ . And that…. Oh, thank God, she was right. Because there was Dawn, and what she had said before, in the suck house, had - thank God, become true. For over a year now he had been living a life William needn’t have been ashamed of. But, oh, god, the rest of it!

    But he couldn’t address that now. The niblet had been hurt. Hell, she’d been dying, dammit. He looked down. There was no lighting storm of green energy bursting from her, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. “You all right, little bit?” he asked, anxious. 

    “Yeah,” she said low. “Yeah, I… I think I am.” She smiled a little, as if surprised by it. Then she groaned, and let her head fall back, as if it were too heavy for her. “Feel like I just ran across Egypt or something, though.”

    “Is she gone?” Buffy asked. Then she caught herself. “Is it… gone?”

    “Yes,” Dawn said. “Dawn… Dawnsoul key thing, it’s all gone. But she was ready to be gone, Buffy, she–”

“Was finished, I know,” Buffy said. “She’s… back where she belongs?” 

“With Mom, I think,” Dawn said. “I’m not sure. I… only caught a second of it.”

Spike couldn’t keep himself from making a small sound at that, but he bit it back.  _ No, no, no, lock it down, Spike m’lad, don’t let her see _ . “Me too,” he said softly. He deliberately made himself grin. “I don’t know about you, but I’m knackered.”

    Dawn laughed, and reached up to hug him. He wanted to scream with it, tell her to get off him, he wasn’t safe. And instead he held her tight, because dammit, god, this was love, and that hurt, too, but… the niblet. He was so glad Buffy had stopped him from screaming. Dawn would have heard, would have blamed herself. No.

    “Dawn’s gonna be okay now?” Xander asked quietly from behind them.

    “I think so, yeah,” Buffy said. 

    “Good,” he said. Tears still streaked down his cheeks, but he had gone past the sobbing stage. “Someone has to be.”

    “Xander, we… have to take them somewhere,” Giles said. “We can’t tell the police what happened here. I think if we take them to the Magic Box….”

    Spike knew this conversation. They’d had it after Buffy had died too – what do we do with the body, what do we tell the authorities, do we tell them at all. He really couldn’t care right now. Fortunately the two men seemed to understand that none of the others were going to be able to handle the mundanities of the problem, not with Dawn still recovering and Spike… no. He stood up – his body seemed to work fine, even though every movement made him want to scream – and carried Dawn to her room. He laid her on her bed, and sank down himself, sitting on the edge, unable to force himself to stand yet.   


    Buffy sat down on the other side of the bed and tucked Dawn into it. 

    “I remember,” Dawn said. “It’s… different. I… I don’t have a soul, but… I remember having one. Being her. Being all of her, or both of us. I remember it. It’s weird.”

    “Is it?” Buffy asked.

    “Yeah,” Dawn said. She lay her head back on the pillows. “I’m really glad I didn’t kill anyone.”

    “That’s good,” Buffy said. 

    “I don’t think I’m gonna,” she said. “Not unless they really piss me off.” She looked over at Spike. “You gonna be okay?” she asked. 

    “Oh, yeah,” Spike said. “I’m dandy.”

    “I can’t believe you’d do that for me,” she said. 

    “I love you, little bit,” Spike said. “I’d do anything for you, you know that.”

    “Even though I screw up?”

    He smiled. “Probably  _ because _ you screw up.” 

    Buffy chuckled, and handed Dawn one of her bears. “You should rest, baby.” 

    “Sing me a song?” she begged of Spike. 

    Spike closed his eyes. Music? She was demanding  _ music? _ There was no way he could find music in this head right now without breaking something. 

    Buffy came to his rescue. “How about this one?” She started a song Dawn seemed to recognize, probably something Joyce used to sing to them. He clenched his fists and wouldn’t let himself do  _ anything _ , tried not to let himself hear, but he kept his face neutral, even pleasant, for the niblet. He was glad Buffy was singing. It covered up the sounds of Giles and Xander using one of his rugs to wrap the two witches together, the tearful discussion about making sure it was respectful as they carried them away, to the Magic Box, to call the proper authorities and spin some tale…. It was Sunnydale. Spun tales were usually believed. He could hear them leaning toward saying that it had been some kind of suicide pact. Well… it wasn’t entirely a lie. 

    Buffy finished the song and stood up, touching Spike on the shoulder. He glanced at the door and nodded to her, indicating, yes, Giles and Xander were taking care of it out there, and the chamber was clear. He stood up, kissed the niblet on the forehead and tucked the blankets up around her. “There you go, little bit. All over.”

   Dawn looked up. “Spike?” she whispered. “Thank you.”

   Spike put his hand on her cheek and smiled down at her. “No need.”

   “Night kiddo,” Buffy said. They went to the door and Spike turned off the light switch. The industrial lamps he’d wired up to it flickered off, and he closed the door on her. 

   Then he let it break. The pain and the horror were released like a broken dam, and he fell to his knees, digging his fingers into his arms to hold back the screaming, refusing to breathe in case it escaped.

   Buffy went down after him, reaching for him, and he pulled away, still unable to breathe for fear of Dawn hearing his horror. But he couldn’t let Buffy touch him, that was… no. Buffy searched his face, stood up, and came back a second later with a pillow from off his bed. “Let it out,” she whispered. “It’s okay. I think she’s asleep. Let it out.”

   Spike released his now bruised arms, smothered his face in the pillow, and screamed and screamed until he was hoarse.

 


	48. Tormented

 

 

   “He won’t let me touch him,” Buffy said quietly. Giles frowned. Willow, Tara, now Spike it seemed. The casualties of this debacle seemed immense. It was all bad enough Giles couldn’t even blame himself for failing to prevent it all. Some things are too big to be the fault of just one man. He ran his finger along the edge of one of the books he had been sorting as they talked, worried. “He just sits in the shadows, in the corner behind the coffin, sort of hugging his knees.”

   “Does he respond?”

   “Do monosyllables count as responses?” She shook her head. “Mostly it’s just ‘Don’t’.”

   Giles didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry, Buffy.” He actually was. Even before this, there had been times of true camaraderie between himself and Spike. Now… now he couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor sod. Whatever the soul was doing to him, it was bound to be unpleasant. Giles had researched Spike’s history. It wasn’t a pretty burden for any human soul to carry. “The only person who could know what to do is probably Angel. Unless you want to call him–”

   “I wasn’t asking what to do,” she said. “I know what to do. But I need you to keep Dawn until I’m done. Can I trust you with that?”

   Giles looked across the Magic Box to where Dawn was poking about at the crystal display. She seemed to have fully recovered from her own ensoulment ordeal, Key powers notwithstanding. “It’s a little irregular.” He frowned. “Uh, how long would it take?” 

“I don’t know,” Buffy said. “Until Spike can be sort of himself again. I’m hoping only a day or two, but I don’t want to leave Dawn alone that long. And Xander… well….”

Xander was grieving hard, and he’d every right to it. Last Giles had seen him, the boy – no, young man. Xander had lost that quality of boyishness along with his boyhood friend – had been writing a long, heartfelt letter to Anya. He didn’t know if the ex-demon was ever going to be in a position to receive it, let alone be receptive to it. He found himself hoping she would. Xander had been forced to grow up a lot in the last few days. Maybe enough that the two would be more equal now….

Willow and Tara were to be buried side by side in Sunnydale. The police had bought the tale of the suicide pact, something they had said was “all too common” with people like that. Giles hadn’t asked what they meant by “people like that.” If they’d answered, he feared he would have been hard pressed not to teach them why he’d once been known as “Ripper.” The Magic Box was still a bit of a mess, though. He’d been hoping to spend the evening cleaning it, and assessing the damage to his magic books. If they were magic books any longer, and not really ancient blank sketch books. Of course, these days, there was probably a market for such things.

“I suppose I can keep Dawn for a day or so.” The girl still looked awfully young. He sighed. “Buffy, have you thought about this? The girl never will age, never grow. She’ll never get to the point where she doesn’t need supervision.”

   “I think she will,” Buffy said. “Spike thought she would. But she really is still a child, Giles, she’s only a few months old.”

   “I’m not sure if that’s how you should measure the age of a vampire.”

   “Spike thinks it is. He should know. She’s lucky. She was fifteen. It’s not as if she was ten or something, she can make herself up to look older, live as a young adult.”

“But fifteen, Buffy.”

“Yeah, she’ll always be impulsive and a little selfish, and very inquisitive. She’s a vampire, Giles. She was always going to be that. She can adapt. People with mental illnesses adapt to them, she can figure it out. She’s got basically forever to learn how. But right now, I need to help Spike out of this.”

   Giles cleaned his glasses. “All right. She can stay here.” As if there’d ever really been a question. After Buffy’s resurrection, there might have been. He’d failed her then, too caught up in his own sorrows and self-blame to shoulder anything. He knew, realistically, that he’d fail again at some point. That was the nature of life. As much as he could, though, he had resolved to be there when she needed him.

   “Thanks. I owe you.”

   He shook his head. “No, actually, Buffy, you don’t. This is my job. I am your watcher. I haven’t always been the best at it. People have gotten hurt… have died….”

“You’re only human, Giles.”

Giles closed his eyes. He didn’t know why, but the phrase had felt like absolution. “I’ll always watch over you, Buffy. Whatever you need.” He finally said it, which he supposed meant he was committed, but… what the hell. “I’m not going anywhere.”

   She didn’t seem to realize what he’d just promised. Which was right, of course. She should be able to take him and his support for granted. It  _ was _ granted. That was the point. She simply hugged him briefly, told Dawn to behave, then went out into the night.

   “So,” said Giles to the vampire who turned to face him. “I have some cleaning to do. You can help, if you like. Or would you care for a book to read? Or... perhaps a... um...” Different book, was what he was going to say, before he realized that was fairly redundant.

   “Have any fresh babies to eat?” Dawn asked. Sharp teeth suddenly glittered in a wide smile. “Or are you the main entree?”

   “Uh...” A frisson of fear slid up Giles’ spine. What were his options? The training room was behind him, there were stakes there, he could maybe throw a chair at the creature, if he locked the door it might take some time to break....

   “Jeeze, Giles, take a joke!” Dawn said, laughing. She slid her fangs away and sat down at the table, still grinning. “Now. Tell me about London in the seventies. ‘Cause Spike says those are stories worth hearing.”

***

 

   If Spike had thought the memory of his mother’s death had devastated him, he was completely destroyed now. The pain of his guilt was immeasurable; the sudden horror of moments that had only caused glee; the dissonance in his head. The urge to kill was still inside him, the need for blood still raked at him, the itch for violence and pain. And the poet cried and hid, and the demon loathed his weakness, and the soul was disgusted by his sin. If there was ever a war between men that was worse than the war inside him right now, Spike hadn’t seen it in all his decades of experience. 

   And worst of all, the devastating realization that it wasn’t over yet. This was only just beginning. There was no end in sight, no hope, no future, only pain and sorrow and grief and horror.

   He was in hell.

   Except angels did not appear in hell. “Come on, Spike,” said the golden seraph before him. “It’s time to come out of there.”

   He just shook his head, clutching at his arms again. “No.”

   Buffy frowned as she saw what he’d done, reaching out to touch his shirt. The pain had become too much at one point, and in desperation Spike had tried to claw the soul out of his chest. The fruitlessness of the gesture eventually struck him, and he’d stopped, but not before he’d shredded his t-shirt and scratched long gouges into his own flesh. His arms were bruised from where he’d been clutching at himself. 

   He hadn’t fully known what to expect. Angel had played at being someone else, but Spike remembered how he’d been those first two years, still trying to be his old bad self and keep access to Darla’s knickers. How had he done it? Feeling like this, all his sins eating him alive. How could he possibly have done all of those things with the soul? How could you do  _ anything _ like this? 

_    I made a mistake, I made a mistake, I made a mistake, _ Spike kept thinking. But... it had saved Dawn. It might have saved Buffy. Maybe the slayer line itself. Hell... it might well have just saved the world. Worth it, right? One tormented demon, a soul dragging round its neck. One pure soul turned black as sin at the demon’s touch, steeped suddenly in a century of depravity and blood. Just two beings, melded, and tortured by the melding, a tiny sacrifice in exchange for the world itself. It had to be worth that, right?

   Buffy crept behind the coffin with him, crouching down before him, her face gentle. She was so beautiful, he had to look away. She was in a simple white dress, her hair partly up behind her, tendrils framing her face. What was she doing here? He’d hoped she’d taken Dawn and gone for good. The sun had risen, the sun had set, and she’d stayed, trying to talk to him a bit, but he sank into himself. From his hole behind the coffin, Spike had heard as Buffy had woken Dawn after sunset and told her they were going for a walk. When Dawn had asked after Spike, Buffy told her he’d gone out, probably off for a drink or something. 

   She had been keeping the truth from her, still. How long would they be able to keep her from knowing what this was doing to him? (How long had he kept her from knowing about Buffy and the mental ward? Dawn was still unaware, as far as he knew.) But they’d gone off together, and he’d been left alone in his dark, tiny grave. He preferred it that way.

   But Buffy was back. “You can’t stay here forever. I know, it seems easier. But you have to trust me.”

   He couldn’t trust  _ himself _ . He had spent a century killing people like her for pleasure. His face crumpled, and he shook his head. He couldn’t face her, couldn’t face this, couldn’t face... himself.

   “William,” Buffy whispered.

   Everything seemed to go still at the name. Him. She meant him. He met her eyes.

   “I know what you’re going through.”

   He shook his head. She couldn’t begin to. She was light, she was life, she was power itself. She could never understand being plunged into dark like this, all the sins on his head crushing his soul.

   She reached out and gently, very gently, took his hands in hers. He almost took them back, but then she whispered, “You just opened your eyes into hell.”

   Was this what it had felt like for her...? No. No, it couldn’t be. “I don’t remember,” he said. One second of peace before the memories rushed in, that didn’t count as remembering anything. He was feeling grief, yes, but not for the loss of heaven. “There’s nothing, no loss, no memory, just... just me.” A hundred years of demonic death. Only death. 

   “Just because you don’t remember heaven doesn’t mean you weren’t there,” Buffy said. “Or part of you, at least. I know it’s different. I know there’s the guilt, and the demon, and... you. A hundred years of you. But that’s already done. That chapter of your life had been closed before this, you don’t need to live there. I need you to live here. With me.”

   “Don’t know if I can,” he said, not meeting her eyes.

   “You can,” Buffy said. “Come with me, now.” She pulled gently at his hands. When he didn’t move, she seemed to lose her patience. “You faked it for Dawn, now fake it for me, for ten minutes, god!”

   Her annoyance did more to spark him than all her gentle patience. He let her pull him out of the corner, out of the shadow, into the light.

   She’d turned off all but one of the electric lamps. The lower chamber was dim and still as she led him to the ladder and up to the crypt. Up there warm firelight glowed, flickering around them.

   His candles were lit. All of them, and even more, arranged artfully around the crypt, a flickering grotto of warmth and light. Many, many candles had been placed on top of the sarcophagus, and on one of his trunks, which had been pulled over to the side of the room. Buffy led him over to the pool of brightness, to the corner of the crypt. There he saw what Buffy had done. She’d created a nest. A mattress and pillows and soft blankets had been slid into the tiny space, ready for – god, no.

   “I can’t, Buffy, don–”

   “Shh,” Buffy said, pulling him into the nest with her. “It isn’t for that.”

   Spike searched her eyes, and saw nothing but acceptance there. God. He didn’t deserve this.

   “Lay down on your stomach,” Buffy said, her warm hands in his. “It’ll be all right.”

   Spike let himself be pulled down onto the bed while Buffy knelt beside him. She placed her hands on his ripped t-shirt. “I am going to take this off you, but no more. All right?”

   He didn’t reply, so she shifted the cloth, and he let her pull it away.

   “All right,” Buffy said. She held his left hand in hers, and started fondling the fingertips, one after another, then stroking each finger in turn, softly, gently. He could feel her warmth as it passed over calluses on his knuckles that he’d forgotten were there, her skin against his sensitive fingertips. He began to wonder exactly what she was doing. He turned his head to watch her. She was completely focused on the task, running her fingers over every part of his hand, making it hum silently, lines of her feather soft touch.

   “Do you feel that?” she asked.

   Spike wasn’t sure exactly why she was asking. “Yeah.”

   “That’s your hand,” she said, stating the blisteringly obvious.

   Her fingers moved up ever so slightly, and she was caressing his sensitive wrist. He shivered. She held his hand and touched him so gently, sliding around and along his skin, sometimes even shifting so her nails scratched, ever so slightly. She caressed his wrist, then his arm, then higher, up the elbow. He gasped as her light touch on the inside of his elbow tickled. Buffy smiled at him a bit when she saw him watching. “Your wrist,” she said gently. She slid her hand up. “Your arm.”

   “What are you doing to me, slayer?” Spike whispered.

   Buffy lay his hand down on her lap and caught his eyes with hers. “I’ve been a soul,” she said. “A soul has no body, no form. It’s only _ self _ . You’ve been this demon. A vampire.” She caressed his skin with the back of her hand. “A vampire is heart, blood, flesh, it feeds on flesh. It’s  _ physical _ .” She slid her hand up his arm, her warmth caressing him up to the shoulder. “You’re both now,” she said. “I want to show you where you are.”

   “Buffy, I don’t–”

   “Don’t think of the past,” Buffy said. “Don’t think of the future. Just try to be here, feel yourself.” She caressed the back of his shoulder with her warm hand. “Feel this.”

   It... did feel good.

   “I don’t deserve this.”

   “There is no deserving,” Buffy said, echoing words that had been used very differently by someone else a long time ago. “And there doesn’t have to be forgiveness. We just have to be here. Together. Two fallen souls.”

   The words made a shiver run through Spike’s chest, and he closed his eyes.

   Buffy lay his arm down and caressed his shoulder, methodically sliding across his back, claiming every inch of his flesh as his own, making him feel each part individually. She caressed the back of his neck, down along his back, and then climbed over him to attend to the opposite arm. He turned his head to follow her, gazing at her, glowing in the candlelight. Did she choose that dress on purpose? Was she trying to be his angel?

   She was very thorough, touching each intricate part of him with absolute attention. Her fingers slid over his black painted nails, touched each cuticle, traced the lines in his palm. If she had been painting him, she couldn’t have touched each spot more thoroughly.

   Finally she finished with his other arm, and shifted. He felt her weight settle onto his hips as she straddled him, and she arched his arms over his head. Then, with a suddenness which surprised him, she scratched her nails down both arms, hard. He sucked in a breath, the pain, slight as it was, like an electric bolt.

   “It’s okay,” Buffy whispered, sliding her hands back to his forearms. He was tense, trembling almost, her weight all along his back. “It’s okay. That’s you, too.”

   Pain. Pain was his as much as gentleness. It felt strange, new, but familiar. He knew it, like he knew her touch, but it was different suddenly. She felt different… how, he couldn’t put his finger on, quite. It felt like when he tried to read without his spectacles, and then put them on. The same words, which he could sort of see before, looked crisper, clearer, with sharper edges, and they were easier to read.

   He hadn’t thought about wearing specs in ages. What was this soul  _ doing _ to him? 

   As Buffy’s hands moved down his shoulders, his back, his waist, he felt her smooth skin, her living warmth. What did he feel, now? Not the guilt and the weight of the horrors of his past. That wasn’t... here. She was right. So what  _ was _ here?

   Well, his human life seemed much closer than it had yesterday. He could remember his mother so clearly. And the scorn and derision he had felt for the man he used to be, that was muted. It was more than paid for by the horror of what he then became, but no. Don’t think about that. What else was this soul doing?

   God, Buffy felt good.

   Was it right that she felt good? Thoughts of sin which had nothing to do with death flickered through his head, and then were dismissed just as quickly. Victorian morality had flaws which any clear soul could see. Sending poor men to workhouses was considered moral, while simple masturbation was considered a purgatory inducing offense. Not to mention the loving relationship between those two women who had sacrificed themselves for the sake of the world – women who should become saints in the estimation of anyone sane. So that version of morality was out. Being with Buffy, in all possible ways… no. That was pure, dammit. The warrior deserved the love of a family, and a body was allowed… allowed…. Oh. She was so warm.

   She slid off his hips and gently turned him. He let her, shifting onto his back, and gazed at her as she returned her ministrations to his stomach. She slid along it, over and over again, from one side to the other, and occasionally she would bend down, and give his chest little kisses. She was clever with her hands (so strong, those hands. If she wanted, they could punch through his chest and take out his heart, he knew they could), gently tickling as she slid up along his ribs, along his sternum, caressing his pecs. She only lightly touched his nipples, and spent more time tracing his collarbone. She was very, very gentle about the scratches he had gouged into his flesh.

   He kept drawing in breaths as she touched sensitive areas, sparked with wonder, sometimes even fear. Very suddenly, he felt the need to tell her something. “I never even kissed a girl,” he said. Buffy looked up into his eyes. “When I was human. I....” He didn’t know why he’d wanted to say that.

   Buffy’s hand left his collarbone and very gently cupped his cheek. “That’s okay,” she whispered.

   Spike closed his eyes. Her hand on his face was too intimate. She seemed to realize that, and went back to his shoulders. She reached down and undid his belt, and Spike gasped. “It’s all right,” she whispered. She shifted him back onto his stomach, and now that he knew what she was doing, he didn’t really mind her pulling his jeans down and away. She touched his hips, sliding along his glutes, moving to his thighs without bothering with the more intimate places. He was glad. He wasn’t sure he was up to those. She shifted, and approached each leg in turn, lifting them, exploring them, the powerful warrior’s muscles under the sensitive skin. The back of his knee, his calf, his shin, his ankle. She slid up and over his foot, rubbing her knuckles along the instep, touching each of his toes. She kissed each little toe gently, one by one. Her lips were warmer than her fingers, and made him close his eyes.

   When she was done with his legs she turned to shift him again. At this point there was really only his thighs and his knees which hadn’t been reclaimed. She cupped each knee, and then slid her hands over his thighs, and before he’d made any more judgements about what should happen next, she was stretched over him, her weight atop him, and really it didn’t matter.

   She fit perfectly against him, straddled over him, intimate but not necessarily sexual. And then she touched his face.

   His eyes closed as she reclaimed every part of it, his cheeks and his cheekbones, gently touching over his eyelids, even brushing at his eyelashes. She smoothed his eyebrows, slid down and touched his ears, passed over his jaw, touched at his chin, and gently caressed his lips with her fingertips. When she seemed to have done with that she put her hands up and petted his white hair, finally ending with her hands behind his head, smiling down at him. 

   “Hello,” she whispered.

   Was she introducing herself? He wasn’t so new as all that. “Hi,” he said. He let his arms go around her, and she sighed against him.

   “This is you,” she said then. “This is yours.”

   He gazed at her in wonder. Whatever she had done had made the war inside him seem... less of a war. It was as if a ceasefire had been called, and the generals had chosen to sit down and hash out a peace agreement. They were still on opposite sides, but... the fires had stopped flaring. “How did you know?”

   “This is what I wished someone had done for me,” she said. “When I first came back.” She pulled her hands up and rested her chin on one while she idly traced nonsense symbols over his chest with the other. “Everything was harsh and bright and... painful. I wasn’t used to being in my body anymore. Or being  _ here _ , inside it. On Earth. I just wished I....” She let herself trail off.  

   “I would have, gladly.”

   She smiled. “I wouldn’t have let you.”

   He found himself chuckling. God, he could laugh? Two hours ago, he’d thought he’d never laugh again. “Oh, god. I love you,” he said. It felt as if he’d just realized it, like it was new. Maybe, for part of him, it was. But it was deep and sharp as a blade, more real than the certainty of her weight atop of him. He gasped with it, terrified almost. “I love you, I love–”

   “Shh,” Buffy said, touching her finger to his lips. “I love you. Heart and soul.” She leaned forward and hovered over him, breathing gently into his mouth, her heat melting down atop of him. And he realized she was waiting for a kiss. She wasn’t pushing for one, she seemed content to nuzzle him gently and breathe in his scent, but she was there and open for it.

   Good god, it wasn’t as if he didn’t know how!

   Struck with sudden annoyance at his own shyness, Spike lifted his head and claimed Buffy’s lips with certainty. 

   And he was startled. Was this even real? Sensation roared through him, and strangely his lust for her felt even more selfish than it had before. Within a moment he had her pressed on her back on the cushions, his body arched over her, half smothering her with ardent kisses. God, yes, this, this, what was this? Just as suddenly he pulled back, frightened, trembling, staring at her in confusion. “Buffy…” he whispered, and it sounded like a sob. 

   Buffy sighed, such sympathy in her eyes. “It’s okay.” She pulled his head down until it rested on her breast, petting, petting, petting his hair, her hand tracing along his throat, along his collarbone, back up to pet him again. Spike closed his eyes. Oh, god, yes. The kiss had consumed him, but this… this was enveloping him, and he could feel her… feel her hands, feel her body, feel…  _ her _ …. 

   He closed his eyes and let himself just breathe her in.     

 

 


	49. Reborn

 

 

Buffy opened her eyes into the still glittering night of the candlelit crypt. They had slept. She wasn’t sure who had fallen first. It had been a traumatizing day for both of them, and neither of them had slept much the night before, what with Riley, and Dawn, and the soul. And… Willow…. It was no wonder they’d fallen asleep. 

   She turned towards Spike, who must have rolled away from her at some point. She reached for him, knowing they both needed comfort, and that he got that from touch, even if he couldn’t bring himself to ask for it now. Her hands met only empty air. Spike wasn’t there. 

    A moment of fear touched her, like it always did if she woke and her lover wasn’t beside her. She calmed down a second later when she saw one of Dawn’s school notebooks on the pillow. In rough, angled cursive, Spike had written, “ _ I’m just outside. _ ”

Buffy climbed off the mat and slipped on her sandals before heading out into the cemetery. At first she saw nothing except that the sky was a glowing teal blue, speaking to sunrise within twenty minutes or so. A handful of anticipatory birds were announcing its coming. It was cold. She wished she’d remembered her jacket, but it was back in the crypt, and she’d finally spotted Spike, perched on a gravestone, staring up at the lightening sky. He was in only his jeans, looking pale and spectral against the stones. It worried her. She came up behind him.

“Hey.” 

Spike took a moment to answer. “Morning.”

Buffy didn’t know what to say. The paling sky worried her. “Spike? Dawn’s any minute, I–” 

“I’ll be in before the sun strikes,” he said softly.

Buffy closed her eyes for a moment. She hadn’t realized she’d been afraid he meant to greet the sun. “What are you doing?” she asked. 

“Smelling the morning,” Spike said. “Listening to the birds. Feeling the dew settle.” He was silent for a moment. “Avoiding you,” he added. 

    Buffy reached for his arm. He caught hers and drew her forward, onto the gravestone beside him, set her hand on his thigh and cupped it beneath his other hand. But he didn’t look at her. “Why?” she asked. 

    “Sun’s coming up,” he said instead of answering. 

    She had just made that point. 

    Then, to her surprise, Spike murmured what seemed at first like utter nonsense.“ All crisp and clear, soft wings of dawn. Naiads lay their heads to rest, become the dew upon the lawn. The birds do sing, their cry of zest, the nightling ones sent scattered on .” He stopped. “I really wanted to say  _ scattered off _ but the rhyme fails it.” He shrugged. “Iambic’s a little off, too. I’m a bit rusty.” 

Buffy stared. “That was you? You wrote that?”

“Been thinking it,” he said. “It’s lame, I was never a very good poet.”

    “I think it’s beautiful,” Buffy said softly. Not really polished or anything, but she thought that made it better. 

He chuckled. “You’re too kind.” His brow furrowed a bit. “I haven’t written any poetry in…,” he shook his head. “Muse always died every time I wanted to.”

“You wanted to?”

He nodded. “When I first fell for you I was beating my head against the wall trying to come up with a poem for you. Always failed after a line or two. Nothing began to capture it.” He glanced at her. “Still doesn’t, but the words are all assaulting me anyway. Looking at you.” He shook his head. “I think I’ve come up with six bad poems in the last two hours. I guess Oscar Wilde had a point. All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.”

“Oscar Wilde?”

Spike nodded. “To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic, he said. I was never a good poet… but I always had genuine feeling.” He closed his eyes and finally answered her earlier question. “I wanted to make love to you,” he whispered, as if it was a terrible confession or something. 

Buffy almost laughed. “I don’t see how that’s a problem.”

“Don’t you?” He laced his fingers through hers. “Buffy. I’m going to tell you something that sounds completely mad.”

    “Won’t be the first time,” she said.

    He smiled, but seemed sad. 

    “Go on,” she prompted.

    “Last night,” he said. He stared into the sky, and took in a deep breath. “Last night was the best night of my life.”

Buffy quickly suppressed a grin of triumph. “I’m glad.” 

Spike shook his head, and refused to meet her eyes. “You don’t understand,” he said. “You didn’t do anything… special. Or magical. You just touched me. Kissed me. Let me hold you.” He swallowed. “And it was the best night of my life.”

Buffy really wasn’t seeing the tragedy here. “I’m glad,” she said again. 

“I could feel you,” he said softly. He looked close to tears. “I could  _ feel you. _ ”

“I know.” 

But he shook his head, as if she just wasn’t  _ getting _ it. “I’ve never felt… close. To anyone. Not like that. Not even Dru. Yeah, she could be distant, off in the clouds with her dolls and pixies, but other times, when we just cuddled and talked, or she let me brush out her hair… I loved her, and she loved me, as much as she could. But it was never like what I just had with you.” He shook his head again, seeming frustrated. “It’s like… like I was feeding, almost. As if I finally had whatever it was I was trying… to drink down all those years. As if I was hungry for something that in the end… wasn’t blood.” He swallowed. “I was starving, and now I’m not. I know that doesn’t make sense…. And it scares the hell out of me.”

Buffy didn’t know what to say. What he was saying sounded good… but if he was scared…. “Why?” 

He closed his eyes. “Because I want more.”

“Isn’t that… a good thing?” 

“Is it?” he asked. He looked up at the sky again. “I took my daughter’s hand, and she opened the door and put this spark inside me. And Buffy, love, it’s burning me raw. I’d be vulnerable to a blow from a feather right now. I couldn’t stand up to a chipmunk, let alone a demon, or something evil.” He clenched his fist, staring at the muscles in his arms. “My strength is still here, but… I’m so exposed. A stripped wire. But I  _ feel _ .  _ Everything _ . I can feel the sun coming, and that matters, and I smell the grass growing, and that matters, and I even hear these sodding birds, and I feel that they’re alive and… it’s all so… raw and real and close.” He swallowed. “I know why we lose our souls,” he said. “It’s not for the evil. Humans can be evil. It’s for the scents, and the sights, and the feel of the world around us, the demon body’s too damn strong, it would short the bloody things out.” He squeezed her hand hard. “The soul… it can’t take it.”

Buffy thought about how that would feel, especially to someone with the soul of a poet. Harsh, maybe, like sandpaper on raw skin. “Angel seemed to endure it,” she pointed out. 

    They were two completely different people, but Spike had been okay with, even interested in, getting his soul while unsouled Angel had hated the idea. Spike was strong. He’d get through this.  

“Yeah,” he said. “Soul can get strong enough, if it doesn’t drive you mad, first.”

“Are you going to be okay?” She’d seen Spike crazy recently. She didn’t want to go there again.

“Eventually, yeah. I think so. I did terrible things… and I feel every one of them. And fortunately, all that’s over now, even though I carry the burden and the horror of it. But you,” he whispered. “Holding you. Being  _ with _ you. I thought the weight of the love would crush me before, but now it’s on  _ fire _ .” He shook his head. “I had to walk away from you.”

“Am I… you mean I’m hurting you?” The thought sent jagged spikes through her. She knew it hadn’t been her fault, but Riley’s words about how she’d pushed him away and made him feel unneeded echoed through her. Angel’s walking away,  _ We can’t be together… I’m just leaving, I’m not saying goodbye…. _ Not to mention Dad. She always did this. Something about her was wrong. She pushed away and hurt the men she loved, she….

“The wanting you hurts,” he said, cutting through her thoughts. “The joy of you hurts. I love you so much. I want you so badly.”

Buffy took a deep breath and pushed her tangle of thoughts aside. Ultimately, this wasn’t about her. He was confused - of  _ course _ he was, after all that had happened - and trying to sort things out. She was some of the sandpaper, but if she did things right, she could smooth out the rough edges and help him find this new shape he was trying to fit into. A shape that had always been inside of him, trapped in the wood. She slid off the gravestone to hold him, but he held her a little away. She pressed on anyway. 

    “It’s okay, Spike. I want you, too.” She cupped his cheek. “I always want you.”

“Buffy, what if I’m like Angel?” he said, seeming to finally come to the crux of it. “What if I make love to you, and this goes away? I can’t live like that anymore.” He shook his head, almost laughing. “Ten hours ago, that was all I wanted, to not feel these things anymore. Now I can’t imagine going back.” He looked up at her. “I can’t go back, Buffy, I can’t, I can’t live like that, I’m–”

“Shh,” Buffy said. She pulled him into a hug, and he buried his head in her shoulder. He was trembling.

“I’m whole,” he whispered to her. “Spark burning inside, and it hurts like hell. You can’t believe the pain, Buffy. The shame, the horror, the terror of it, but now I’m so scared to go back. I don’t want to be just–”

“I know.” She gently stroked his hair, wishing there was more she could do for him. Some demon she could beat up with her slayer strength to make it all better. But all she could do was hold him, use that strength to squeeze him tight.

“I don’t want to be just that again,” Spike whispered. “It’s so empty.”

“I know.”

She did know. This was what he’d been searching for. The thing she’d seen was missing, and had been supplying for him in a limited fashion, but wasn’t quite enough. Spike had a heart deep as the sea. Becoming a vampire had opened up his world. That and having Drusilla to care for, along with the nature of being a fledge, had kept him from really noticing the lack of his soul. But now, as a mature vampire living in a world where he was free to be himself without society crushing the life out of him? He couldn’t live a life of shallow pleasures and have it be enough for him anymore. Even the love he felt, real as it was, had just been blown out of the water by whatever he was feeling now.

“I’m twisted up,” Spike said. “I-I couldn’t just–”

“Spike, I don’t think you’re like Angel.”

“How do you know? Same curse, Dawn just transferred it to me, it–”

“No,” Buffy said. “She didn’t. She opened the gate herself, you chose this. This wasn’t cursed onto you, you  _ chose it _ .” She climbed up onto his lap. “Making love to me shouldn’t erase it, and even if it does… we’ll make it work.”

“I don’t want… to lose this. I don’t want to just  _ make it work _ , Buffy, you can’t imagine the difference… it’s like I was half blind, or…” 

“I know. I don’t think it’ll happen, but if it does, we’ll find another way. We can get it back for you. Didn’t you say something about Africa, or trying to find another spell, one that isn’t so volatile? We can do this. It’ll be okay.” 

She kissed him, and he moaned, gripping her strong. A moment later he pulled away. “You’re trembling.”

“Kinda cold.”

Spike looked around as if expecting his coat to be somewhere, and it wasn’t. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll go back in.” 

   She slid off his lap, and he stood and held his arm for her, and then frowned at it, flexing his hand as if it had just betrayed him. If his soul was back, then the Victorian gentleman he had been was probably much closer. Buffy grinned and took his arm, as if he hadn’t just done something slightly out of character.

Spike walked her back to the crypt and bent down to the nest when they got there, catching up a blanket. He wrapped it around Buffy’s shoulders and then sat her down in his chair, kneeling down before her. For a few terrified seconds, Buffy was afraid he was going to propose or something. But all he did was bend his head to her lap and sort of… put himself at her mercy. 

She stroked his head like it was one of the kittens for a few moments, and then slid off the chair onto the floor with him, searching out his lips. The kiss was sweet and soft and exploratory, as if he were learning her all over again. Which… maybe they both were.

After a few moments, she pulled her head away. “You are going to make love to me,” she said. “And see that your soul stays right where Dawn put it. And after that, you’re going to do it again, maybe with handcuffs.”

Spike broke into a grin. “Buffy….”

“But before that,” she said. “Before that, there’s one other part of you we need to bring out, and introduce your soul to.”

“What’s that?”

Buffy leaned forward and whispered into his ear. “Bite me, my William,” she said. “Be my demon, and my man, and my love. Take me into yourself, and make us one again.”

Spike leaned back. For a long moment she thought he was going to question it, or express some doubt, or even fight her on it. But no. After a long moment, he furrowed his brow, and let his demonic visage rise, his eyes turn, his fangs grow.

“There you are,” Buffy said, and caressed his hooded brow, made him open his lips so she could gently touch his teeth. “This is yours, too.” Then she smiled. “And so am I.”

Spike regarded her for a moment, a strange look on his hooded face. And then, without any warning, he lunged at her throat with a growl. Buffy tensed, but he didn’t clamp down. He prepared her flesh again, as he had before in the mansion, slathering her with his tongue so the anesthetic would enter her bloodstream quickly. And a moment later she felt him penetrate her skin, and she revelled in the pain for a moment before Spike took it all away. 

 

***

 

She was right. Spike knew it at the taste of her. Blood and flesh. Hearts and souls. Life and death and loving. It was all one. To center a soul by claiming the body. To calm a body by touching a heart. To warm a heart by entering a life. To fill a life by centering a soul. She was his own, his love, his life, his heart, his body, his soul. She was the one. And so long as he could be hers, nothing else mattered. Not sin and not fear, not death and not sorrow. Not souls or demons or anything but  _ this _ . He was what she needed of him, the Big Bad with a good heart, the demonic killer with a human soul, the warrior poet. He’d opened to her, left himself vulnerable. She had opened her soul to him. All he had to do was learn how to open his own for her. 

He lifted her, his lips still sealed around her throat, and carried her to the nest she had made for them. There he kissed her and himself into ecstasy, blood and joy and trust all at once. Then he stripped them both, white cotton and black denim, and the slayer and the vampire made love by the filtered light of the oncoming dawn. 

 


	50. Found

    The full moon shone down on the gravestone in the cemetery, and crickets chirped loudly in the surrounding bushes. The stone was beautiful. Buffy had designed it, and Willow’s parents had agreed to it so long as the Star of David was on it somewhere. Buffy had made the star look like a Celtic knot, to honor Tara’s heritage as well. The names were nestled quietly beside each other. Tara Maclay. Willow Rosenberg. And beneath their birth and death dates – one death date for the both of them – the epigraph: _They will soar high, on wings like eagles._ Which, for all it was Old Testament (Spike seemed to remember it in Isaiah from when he still had to read the bible as a boy), could apply to a Wiccan as well.

    He’d come alone. It was easier, after the debacle the last time he’d stood by this grave, which was sort of why he was coming by this time. He wanted to apologize for what had happened before.

Spike’s first impulse had been to bring flowers, but Red’s background was Judaism, and they had something against that, as he understood it. He’d thought about bringing a pebble, maybe a pretty one to share with Tara or something, but rather than dance around religious meanings of things he didn’t really understand, he finally landed on what he really should leave. He’d only had it put into his hand this afternoon. The bandage still graced the back of his head.

    “They took it out,” he said to the stone. He held the strange circular thing in his hand, flipping it through his fingers like a magic coin. “My chip. I actually told Buffy to leave it in, and she got right brassed off about it. Said I wanted it out when I didn’t have a soul, what was the difference? I told her I didn’t trust myself anymore, and she actually hit me.” He smiled slightly at the memory. God, but she was beautiful when she was riled. “I, uh, didn’t really have a chance to talk last time…. I mean, your official funeral and all was during daylight, and I know you didn’t expect me there, but the one after? That night? I’m sorry about the blow up.” He shook his head. “Angel just gets under my skin.”

    There had been a second funeral after sunset the day of Tara and Willow’s memorial, after Willow’s family and Tara’s cousin (the only member of her family who had deigned to attend) had left. Out of the woodwork had come witches and demons and other creatures of the night. Mostly it was held for Spike and Dawn to attend, but Amy had made an appearance, and while Rack didn’t show up, Spike thought the other young witch was carrying tales for the old screw.

   To Spike’s surprise, Clem had shown up. Turned out he and Tara shared a love for artisan potato chips, and they’d kept running into each other at the open-after-midnight health food store. Two easy-going, not overly judgemental sorts. Not hard to imagine them striking up a bit of friendship. He could almost hear Tara’s voice, gently twitting the loose-skinned demon over his obsession with the History Channel.

   Clem hadn’t been the only surprising visitor. That Jonathan bloke what had done that reality altering spell a while back had shown up too, with some nervous looking friend in tow. They were apparently planning on buying a farm somewhere south of Sunnydale for a friend of theirs… they were hazy on the details. What it all really meant was that Tara and Willow both had been hugely loved, by both humans and the more supernatural underground.

    And Angel had come, too. Which would have been fine, except the bloody wanker had been horrified to see Spike and Buffy together, and further horrified by Dawn. And when Buffy had told him about the soul – and Dawn had made a big point about how Spike had chosen his and how Angelus was a really evil monster when he didn’t have one – a fight had ensued. Rather a violent one.

   It had ended with both Spike and Angel bruised, bloodied, and covered in mud at the edge of the river. Spike had won hands down, something he’d never done with Angel before. He didn’t know if it was the soul made him more determined, or if he’d just matured. Despite his ire he’d managed not to stake the poof, and somehow they’d come crawling out of the ravine laughing. Buffy had punched him in the nose for it, calling him a stupid vampire. He’d hit her back, and then they’d ended up kissing. Not much beyond that, though, out of respect for the departed.

    “One good thing, though, I haven’t had problems fighting since. Buffy was… getting a little shirty about how I kept holding back. That was the thing about the chip. I talked to Riley when he was still recovering from surgery.”

   Apparently, all the mucking about the government had done to the man’s heart needed actual open surgery, none of that _scope through the ribs, slap a bandaid on it, it’ll be fine_ bollocks. The docs at good old Sunnydale Memorial had managed to get things through the bugger’s thick skull. His body couldn’t handle all that had been asked of it. His new bird had put her foot down and was making him leave the military. About bloody time, too.

   “Dunno if it was the drugs or a new outlook on life, but it was actually a good talk. Bit like old times. If you count the once when he attacked me before he buggered off as old times. I snuck in a fifth of whiskey, and he was grateful for the shot. We spoke about Dawn, and Buffy, and….” He rubbed at the scar that still graced his chest. “Well. A lot of things, really. In the end we all made our peace. He told me how to work the remote, and one of Giles’ friends came to get the chip out once we turned it off. But… I’d sort of wanted the chip as a backup. Just in case. Buffy says it’ll be fine.”

   He still had misgivings about it. All he’d done, the pain and sorrow he’d caused through a century of wanton mayhem? He wasn’t sure he could ever trust himself. But he would trust Buffy.

    “She’s starting school again, did you know?” he abruptly told the gravestone. “Buffy says wherever you are, you sort of… know if everyone you care about is okay. I don’t know if that applies to demons… but I figured you’d be glad to know, Dawn’s starting night classes too. Police said she was just _missing_ , so… we let them know we found her. She’s all Dawn again on paper and all. But we got a pet doctor to give her an official diagnosis of extreme sun allergy, or whatall. Enough that taking high-school level classes at the community college makes sense to everyone. She’s wanting to become a doctor, can you believe it? Yeah, me neither. But she said getting that soul back, even for a few minutes, made things really clear in her head. It’s like she’s got louder echoes of Dawn in her now. Seems to make her thoughtful. Took the edge off the bloodlust a bit, which is good.

    “Buffy’s re-enrolling for the next term, too,” he added. “I suggested history major. I could help with her homework.” He grinned impishly. “We’re trying to figure out living arrangements. Buffy’s not quite ready for a live-in lover, but she was rattling around in that house all alone until Giles moved back in. He has his own room now and all. She seems to want Dawn back, but she also gets that the niblet wants to be with her sire. We’re a bit of a package deal these days. Good thing she loves both halves of the package.”

    Spike reached forward and set the defunct microchip on top of the gravestone, alongside the pebbles from Willow’s family and… strangely, a broken yellow crayon. Xander had probably put that there. Spike felt for the boy. He was the worst off in the whole thing. He and Anya had become pretty devoted pen pals, though, now that he had a lot of emotions to share honestly. The possibility of _Well, maybe someday_ seemed a bit closer now, even though Anya hadn’t come back to Sunnydale as of yet.

    “Anyway. I needed to thank you, Tara,” he said. “I never could have handled those early days with Dawn without your backup. And Red.… Willow.”

    He stared at her engraved name. He’d always liked the chit. Had seen a lot of himself in her, to the point where he’d actively wanted to turn her, though only if she’d agreed to it. He hadn’t often felt that way about folks, through the buried memories of his mother. The idea sickened him now, but he still thought Willow would have made a cute vampire.

    “You know, I get it. I didn’t always agree with everything you ever did, but… I usually agreed with the why you did it. Came from the heart and all, even when it came out wrong. So.” He shrugged. “Here’s where we are.”

    “And here’s where _you_ are!” Dawn said loudly. “Buffy! I found him! _Told_ you he’d be here.”

    Spike turned to smile at his daughter. “How long have you been looking for me?”

    “Long enough,” Dawn said. “Are you coming to the Bronze with us or not?”

    “I didn’t think your party started for another hour, niblet.”

    “I wanted you to do my makeup!” Dawn said, practically vibrating with excitement.

   She may have been technically dead, but she was as full of life as he’d ever seen her. Not surprising, really, it being her sweet sixteen and all. Xander and Giles were going to be there, and Clem had made her a cake, which he’d warned her not to share with her human friends. Sixteen…. On paper at least. Of course, she’d only been real and human for a year. She’d really only been a vampire for about six months. Time was very relative with his daughter. She’d never age, but it was her sixteenth birthday all the same. It was important to mark the human milestones. Keep her in touch with her humanity, so humans would stay more than just forbidden food.

    “I told her _I_ could do it,” Buffy grumped good naturedly.

    “Not like he can. Seriously, he’s a total genius at this stuff. You should see what he does with eyeshadow. He does this smokey thing… it’s awesome.”

    Spike couldn’t help preening a bit at the compliment. May have seemed silly, but making up a face just right took skill and talent, and he was bloody well proud of it. “She’s seen it, bit. She’s fought Dru.”

    Buffy grinned. “And if you turn my sister into Evil Undead…”

    “ _Far_ too late for that,” both Spike and Dawn said, almost in unison.

   Buffy rolled her eyes at that, but the grin stayed in place. “Come on, Magic Make-up Man, it’s going to take all your mojo and the rest of our time to get my stinky howler monkey of a sister presentable,” she teased.

   “Hey!” Dawn screeched. “You’re the stinky howler monkey that got left on the doorstep, not me!”

   In a mutual display of maturity and heartfelt respect, the sisters stuck their tongues out at each other. Then Dawn was off like a shot, declaring the last one home was a feeder mouse.

   Home. Since his turning, Spike had never really had a home, constantly roaming, going back and forth across the pond as the mood struck him or as Drusilla’s pixies commanded. If asked, he’d have said he prefered the excitement of the roving life. And there was something to that, but mainly, nowhere had ever really felt like home. Now, though? The crypt or the house on Revello drive, as long as one or both of his girls was there, that was home.

   All his life, and all his unlife, he’d been looking for something. Something to become, someone to love, somewhere to call home. He thought back to how it had all started, Halloween night spent looking for a girl. He hadn’t quite been in time, but he’d found her. And in finding her, he’d eventually found… everything. Everything he’d been searching for and more.

   Spike wasn’t in the mood to race tonight. He offered Buffy his arm, and Buffy reached out and took it, and they headed back toward his crypt a bit more sedately.

   “I’m glad we found you in time,” Buffy said. “She was about to go ballistic.”

   “Yeah, love,” Spike said. “Right glad you both found me, too.”   

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for sticking with us through this epic season rewrite! It was a blast to come together to do, and we hope you enjoyed it.


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